UK: Later living rental developer and operator Birchgrove has made two appointments to its C-suite, appointing a COO and CFO.
Marcus Hodges will join as chief operations officer, with Raphaël Koifman taking the role of chief financial officer.
Birchgrove operates three retirement communities in south-east England and has acquired three more sites which are under construction. A seventh site in Chiswick, wet London, has been secured, with two more locations to follow in the coming months.
Prior to Birchgrove, Hodges served as UK operations director for coliving provider The Collective, where he led a team of around 100 in growing the UK business. He has also served in senior operational roles for IQ Student Accommodation and Unite Students. He has more than two decades commercial and operational management experience in coliving, BTR and student accommodation.
Raphaël Koifman brings extensive experience in real estate finance. At property developer Avanton, and property investment firm Griffen, Koifman served as CFO, where he was responsible for all operational, financial, tax and regulatory matters.
Koifman previously worked for several institutional lending platforms and banks, including Cheyne Capital, Deutsche Pfandbriefbank, Santander and Barclays Capital. As CFO of Birchgrove, his responsibilities will include all financial and tax aspects of the business and the sourcing of funding to support the growth of the company.
Honor Barratt, chief executive of Birchgrove said: “At Birchgrove, we have intimate and extensive knowledge of our later living customer and what they need from us to build somewhere they can call home. What we were looking for in Marcus and Raphael was all the knowledge we don’t have, namely how to roll out a portfolio at scale and speed, and how to drive the best possible yield on exit. With these two on board, every day we are honing our operations and bringing our model closer to BTR yields.”
