Real Estate Investor Magazine July/ Aug 2020 July 2020 | Page 12

MASTER INVESTOR
Neworld’s LX Living in
Lisbon, Portugal
In 2012 John embarked on a new chapter in his career by
founding South Africa’s first ‘private label’ property company,
Signatura, dedicated to re-energising Cape Town’s inner city
and existing suburban areas. Focusing on high-end residential
and mixed-use developments in the City Bowl and the Atlantic
Seaboard, Signatura has successfully executed 27 projects to
date with a value in excess of R3-billion.
In 2019 John founded his third major property company,
Neworld, a European domiciled entity established to
spearhead his developments outside of South Africa. The
company now has offices in the Michael Kors Building on the
justly celebrated Avenida de Liberdade, the Champs Elysée of
Lisbon.
Neworld has joined forces with Swiss-based company
GMG Real Estate to focus on development opportunities in
the Portuguese and other European markets. The aim is to
leverage GMG’s significant foothold in these markets through
John’s proven marketing flair and mixed-use development
expertise.
The first joint venture between Neworld and GMG is a
marvellously located, mixed-use complex in Lisbon called LX
Living. Substantial funding has been contributed by Skybound
Capital, a global wealth management business, providing a
range of investment products for family offices, private clients,
advisors and institutions.
LX Living is a €90 million brownfield development in
Amoreiras, a prime location in the heart of Lisbon’s gracious,
spacious CBD. The residential component of the development
consists of 150 apartments and penthouses. After successive
– and highly successful – launch events in Cape Town,
Johannesburg and Lisbon, 110 of these apartments have been
sold off-plan to date.
Following the success of this project, which is now under
construction, Neworld and GMG are working on another two
multi-million euro, mixed-use projects in Lisbon, the first of
which is due to launch in late 2020.
THE MAESTRO UNDER THE
MICROSCOPE
What is your vision for the future of Signatura?
“We’re living in extremely turbulent times in South Africa,
and have been for the last five or six years. And turbulence
does produce opportunity. Where we’re focusing right now
is on the opportunities that large-scale, mixed-use, inner city
developments offer to improve the quality of life for all income
levels through the application of intelligent , eco-friendly
design principles.”
“Everyone’s talking about
the new normal. But from a
broader perspective, there
really is no normal, and
never has been.”
What separates your companies from the rest of the
market?
“I’d like to think that we see the opportunities more quickly
than our competitors and that generally we stay ahead of the
pack in the creativity and the quality of what we produce.
This enables us not only to find, but quite literally to make,
new markets as we move through the different phases of the
property cycle.”
How do you foresee the future of property development
in South Africa, as well as in Europe?
“South Africa does of course face enormous challenges.
Many of these are related to the structural difficulties our
economy faces, given our unique social and political situation
– which is unfortunately compounded by something of a
8 JULY/AUGUST 2020 SA Real Estate Investor Magazine