Jonathan Bayfield

Jonathan is a Director in the European Real Assets Research and Strategy team and the Head of Real Estate Research, covering both UK and Continental Europe. He is an expert in Private Markets, developed over a ten year career focussed on quantitative and qualitative analysis. Jonathan works across the real estate capital stack; specifically on Aviva Investors’ fund and joint venture equity investments, as well as on our debt and long income mandates. As part of his role, he manages the inputs and outputs to Aviva Investors’ proprietary models, which help form an independent house view on the relative attractiveness of potential opportunities across Real Estate and Real Assets.

Jonathan has also led recent thematic research efforts into new sectors like Single Family Residential, PBSA and Self-Storage. Jonathan continues to lead on thematic-led Real Estate research, and part of his role now encompasses analysing platform (OpCos) partners and also identifying potential routes to market for our business.  Not long ago, Jonathan was an interim voting member on the Real Estate IC and remains part of the senior team that challenge and give guidance on investment and portfolio construction decision-making. As part of his wider role, he has also led the management of our Real Assets Graduate and Intern scheme as he is passionate about the growth of more junior professionals and socially diversifying the industry. 

Jonathan joined Aviva Investors in 2017 as a Senior Analyst, moving up to Senior Associate Director in 2019, and is now a Director and the Head of Real Estate Research. Prior to this, Jonathan worked in JLL’s Research and Consulting team, focussing on the UK and continental Europe.

Jonathan holds an MSc in Real Estate from Reading University's College of Estate Management, and a BSc in Geography from University College, London. He also holds the CFA Society’s Investment Management Certificate, and is a committee member for AREF’s Research and Information Committee and AREF’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Taskforce. He is also an active member of ULI, SPR, INREV and CREFC and has had extensive event presentation experience, recently presenting at ULI, SPR, AREF and University College, London conferences and events.

His insights are often picked up by the media - he has been quoted by Bloomberg, the FT, Property Week and React News of late. Jonathan also mentors young people through the social mobility charity Career Ready and at the City of London University.