I Built a Database of 2,000+ Real Estate Investors and Capital Contacts

Here’s how to find the ones who might actually care about your deal.

Most investor lists are pretty useless.

You get hundreds of company names, maybe a website and a generic email address.

But you still have no idea:

• What they actually invest in

• Whether they invest directly

• Which countries they care about

• What size of deal they look at

• Who the relevant person is

• Whether your opportunity is even remotely suitable

So you end up with a massive spreadsheet, send out a load of generic messages and get almost nothing back.

I have been on both sides of this.

I have spent years working across real estate investment, development and operations through Park Lane Group, with exposure to more than $1 billion in assets under management.

I have also spent a ridiculous amount of time researching investors, raising capital, speaking to family offices and trying to understand who is actually active in the market.

So I decided to build the resource I always wanted.

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Meet REX

REX is a searchable database of more than 2,000 real estate investors, family offices, funds, developers and capital contacts across the GCC, UK and Europe.

It is not just a list of company names.

It includes the data and context you need to work out which organisations might actually be relevant to your opportunity.

But before I show you how it works, there is something important to understand:

Having access to 2,000 investors does not help if you contact the wrong 1,950.

The quality of your search matters just as much as the size of the database.

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The six things you should know before searching for investors

1. What exactly are you raising capital for?

“Real estate” is not an asset class.

It could mean:

• A ground-up residential development

• A completed apartment building

• A logistics portfolio

• A hotel acquisition

• Student accommodation

• Build-to-rent

• Retail

• Offices

• A real estate operating company

• A PropTech business

An investor buying stabilised logistics assets is probably not going to fund an early-stage residential development.

The more specific you are, the better your investor shortlist becomes.

2. Where is the asset?

This sounds obvious, but it is often misunderstood.

Where an investor is based is not necessarily where they invest.

A Dubai family office might invest heavily in London.

A UK investor may be actively looking at opportunities in the GCC.

A European fund might only invest in a handful of specific cities.

Do not assume that the investor’s headquarters tells you their investment geography.

Look for evidence of where they have actually deployed capital.

3. How much money do you need?

A £2 million equity requirement and a £100 million equity requirement require completely different investors.

Before you start outreach, work out:

• Total project value

• Total equity requirement

• Minimum investment you can accept

• Maximum investment required

• Whether you want one investor or a group

A surprising amount of investor outreach fails because the deal is simply too small or too large for the person receiving it.

4. What level of risk are you asking them to take?

Some investors only want completed, income-producing assets.

Others are comfortable investing in:

• Land

• Planning

• Construction

• Repositioning

• Value-add strategies

• Operating platforms

• Early-stage businesses

Saying that someone invests in residential property is not enough.

You need to know whether they invest before construction, during development or only after the asset is stabilised.

5. What structure are you offering?

Are you looking for:

• Joint venture equity

• Preferred equity

• Senior debt

• Mezzanine finance

• A whole-asset buyer

• A fund investor

• Platform capital

• Operating-company investment

The same investor could reject one structure and be interested in another.

Be clear about what you are actually asking them to do.

6. Why should this investor care?

This is the most important question.

Before contacting any investor, you should be able to explain why the opportunity is relevant to them specifically.

Maybe:

• They have invested in the same asset class

• They already operate in that market

• The deal complements an existing portfolio

• They have recently raised a new fund

• They are entering a new geography

• They have publicly discussed that strategy

• You have a relevant mutual relationship

If your only reason is that they appear on a list of family offices, you probably need to do more research.

A practical example

Imagine you are raising capital for a £30 million build-to-rent development in the UK.

A poor search would be:

Give me a list of real estate investors.

You would probably get a long list containing pension funds, developers, lenders, brokers, venture firms and investors that have never touched UK residential property.

A much stronger search would be:

Find family offices, private real estate investors and investment firms across the GCC, UK and Europe with evidence of investing in UK residential development or build-to-rent. Prioritise groups able to provide £5 million to £15 million of equity and comfortable taking development risk.

Now the search includes:

• Asset class

• Geography

• Investor type

• Cheque size

• Risk profile

• Investment structure

That is a completely different starting point.

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Three searches you can use

Dubai residential development

Find family offices, developers and private investment firms with evidence of investing in Dubai residential development. Prioritise groups that invest directly, consider joint ventures and have experience with projects worth more than AED 100 million.

Hotel or serviced-apartment acquisition

Find investors across the GCC, UK and Europe with previous investments in hotels, hospitality or serviced apartments. Prioritise groups interested in operating assets, repositioning opportunities and value-add acquisitions.

PropTech or real estate AI company

Find family offices, venture firms and strategic real estate investors that have previously invested in PropTech, construction technology, property data, AI or real estate operating platforms.

The difference between a useful investor list and a useless one is often the quality of the question you start with.

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Why we built REX

REX lets you run these searches across more than 2,000 real estate investors, companies and relevant contacts.

We connect directly to official government and company databases and then enrich the records using a combination of research, classification, data-matching and other techniques that are difficult to reproduce manually.

We have also worked with and built relationships with a number of firms in the database, allowing us to add additional context and curate some records where appropriate.

This is not the same as opening ChatGPT and asking it to find real estate investors.

ChatGPT might give you a plausible list of company names.

It does not have access to our structured database, enrichment work, market relationships and underlying company intelligence.

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What is inside REX?

Depending on the company, a record can include:

• Company name and type

• Headquarters

• Geographic focus

• Investment strategy

• Relevant asset classes

• Company website

• Key contacts

• LinkedIn profiles

• Recent investment activity

• Background information and source notes

You can also search it using AI

You do not need to manually review all 2,000 records.

You can describe your deal to the AI assistant inside REX and ask it to identify the strongest potential matches.

For example:

We are raising £10 million of equity for a UK build-to-rent development. Find GCC family offices with previous UK residential investments and an appetite for development risk.

REX searches the underlying database and returns a more targeted shortlist based on the information we hold.

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What can you use REX for?

You can use it to:

• Find potential investors

• Research family offices

• Build targeted outreach lists

• Search capital by geography or asset class

• Find relevant people inside an organisation

• Identify potential partners or clients

• Prepare for investor meetings

• Understand where different companies are active

It will not turn a bad deal into a good one.

It will not replace proper relationship-building.

And it does not mean that every investor in the database is actively looking at new opportunities today.

But it can remove hours of fragmented research and help you start with a far more relevant list.

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Get access to REX

REX is included with Real Brief Pro.

Today, Real Brief is read by more than 1,500 real estate professionals around the world who use our analysis, data and market intelligence.

I also build Buildable, AI software used by institutional real estate teams in Dubai for investment, valuation and market research.

Real Brief Pro members receive:

• Full access to more than 2,000 contacts

• Coverage across the GCC, UK and Europe

• AI-powered investor matching

• New investor and company records

• Future REX collections

• Private Real Brief research and data

• Additional tools and resources as we release them

You can start a free trial and explore REX before deciding whether to remain a paid member.

Start your free trial below to access the database.