In 2013 I was asked by Prada to help consolidate their position on Old Bond Street. They already held 17–18. They wanted number 16, the shop next door.

Number 16 was not for sale. It was owned by an overseas investor who had bought it two years earlier in a deal that had been well publicised at the time. There was no listing to respond to, no marketing campaign to enter, and no agent to negotiate with. That is what a genuinely off-market acquisition looks like at the outset: the thing you want, owned by someone with no stated intention of selling it.

The deal completed in December 2013. What follows is how that kind of instruction actually proceeds, because the process is far less glamorous and far more useful than the outcome suggests.

Stage one: establishing what you actually need

A consolidation is not the same as an acquisition. The brand did not need a shop; it needed that specific shop, because contiguity was the entire point. Adjacency to an existing store creates a frontage and an internal footprint that no comparable unit elsewhere on the street can replicate.

That narrows the target to one building and eliminates every alternative. It also removes almost all of your negotiating leverage, because the seller, once engaged, knows there is no substitute. Recognising this at the outset changes how you approach everything that follows.

Stage two: understanding the owner

Before any approach, the work is research. Who owns it, through what structure, in which jurisdiction, and why did they buy? An investor two years into a purchase has an acquisition thesis. Understanding that thesis tells you whether a sale is conceivable and, if so, what would make it attractive.

An owner holding for income responds to different arguments than one holding for capital appreciation, or one whose wider portfolio has shifted, or one facing a tax or succession event. None of this is discoverable from a database. It comes from asking people who know them.

Stage three: the approach

The approach is the moment the instruction can fail permanently. Approach badly and the owner concludes there is a motivated buyer, prices accordingly, or simply refuses on principle and closes the door for years.

Two things matter. First, discretion about who the buyer is. If the owner knows a major house next door needs this specific unit, the price is no longer related to the market. Second, the approach should come from someone with standing, in a way that reads as a professional enquiry rather than a chase.

Stage four: persuasion, which takes time

The word we used in the original write-up of this deal was persuaded, and it was accurate. An owner with no intention of selling is not converted in a phone call. They are brought round over months, as the proposition is refined to meet what they actually want.

Sometimes that is price. Frequently it is not. It may be timing, certainty of completion, the tax position, or a structure that suits them. The work is finding the version of the transaction that is better for them than continuing to hold, and that requires patience most transaction processes do not allow for.

Stage five: execution without leaks

Once agreed, the risk shifts to disclosure. A deal of this kind can be destroyed by a single conversation reaching the market before exchange, because it invites competing approaches to the seller. Controlling who knows, and when, is part of the job rather than a courtesy.

What this generalises to

Very few brands need a Bond Street consolidation. But the method applies to any situation where the unit you want is occupied, which in prime London is most of the time.

The visible market is a fraction of the real one. If your requirement is specific, waiting for it to be advertised means waiting for something that will probably never happen, or competing for it against everyone else the moment it does. The alternative is to identify what you actually want and go and ask.

That is slower, and it is the only route to the units that matter.

Further reading: The Off-Market: Why London’s Best Deals Never Reach a Listing · A Flagship Is Not a Unit · About Aldo Attanasio d’Aponte

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Aldo Attanasio d’Aponte is the founder and chief executive of Arbitrage Group, a boutique buyer-side advisory specialising in prime central London real estate. This article is general commentary and not financial, legal, planning or tax advice.