BlackRock has bolstered its UK real estate team with the hire ofPaul Tebbit, who as director will help the team finding new opportunities for the company’s UK property fund.

Tebbit will be based in London and report to Jeff Morton, the team’s head of investment and managing director.

Tebbit joins from Telereal Trillium, part of the William Pears Group, where he, among other things, worked with real estate investments.  Earlier in his career he was an acquisitions manager at Wesgroup Properties in Vancouver, Canada. 

The BlackRock UK Property Fund, which is Jersey-domiciled, is s an open-ended fund with a value of £2.1 billion ($3.4 billion) at the end of September.

Property agency firm Knight Frank predicts that luxury real estate prices in central London, which are higher than ever, will rise by about 25 per cent in the next five years.