A top London lawyer wants to create ‘the California of Europe’ in the Algarve
Neel Sachdev helped take a wrecking ball to London’s legal market, to then rebuild it. Now his side hustle as a property developer is turning his attention to Portugal
“Welcome to Portugal!” says Neel Sachdev, stepping out of his red open-top 1977 Mercedes 450 SL in a matching red outfit, sunglasses and trademark beaded bracelets on both wrists.
The car is on brand for the British-Indian lawyer, who had already texted five photos of the vehicle to me that morning, including one with his Gucci tennis racket holder in the back. Sachdev tells me he bought the car, which arrived from the Netherlands that week, as a throwback to his childhood watching high-glamour American TV series such as Hart to Hart and Dallas.
As we edge towards Sachdev’s holiday house in the hills of Santa Bárbara de Nexe, amid Europe’s fourth heatwave of the summer, I feel like I am entering another orbit. Sachdev’s orbit.
Sachdev has become a well-known figure in London’s Big Law scene. In 2023, he staged a coup, defecting from Kirkland & Ellis, the world’s largest law firm, to join arch-rival Paul Weiss, where he is now global vice-chair and head of the London office.
Since then, he has grown the UK arm of the elite Wall Street firm from a satellite office of about 15 lawyers to 275, and taken a wrecking ball to the capital’s legal market. Sachdev’s build-out acted as a catalyst for a new wave of investment by US law firms, as American lawyers sought to service their lucrative private equity clients in Europe. The influx of firms has led to lawyers switching employers at an unprecedented rate in London, and top partners now earning upwards of $20mn a year.
“There’s definitely more of a star culture,” Sachdev, a private equity specialist, says. “I’ve helped clients with finding divorce lawyers; drafting wills. The model is the consigliere model. You’re the go-to lawyer, point person . . . I play tennis regularly with probably 10,” says Sachdev, whose resident doubles tennis partner in London is the perennially cheery TV chef Ainsley Harriott (not a client).
We are in Portugal to visit Sachdev’s side hustle. In 2022, a real estate investor neighbour and now business partner went to the Algarve and found a plot of land, a former orange grove, ripe for development.
After checking with his astrologer in India — also used by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sachdev says — Sachdev co-invested in the plot and built a house. (He also called on his astrologer before leaving Kirkland, and says he sometimes takes the same astrological approach to prospective Paul Weiss hires.)
Today, 10 more houses are under various stages of construction to rent or sell on the land, named Laranjeiras — “orange trees”. The total plot cost €1.5mn and the houses, which all range in size between 5,000 and 6,000 square feet and have pools, were valued at more than €3mn apiece this year, Sachdev says. They are expected to be finished by 2028.
While many high-earning lawyers own multiple holiday homes and some passively invest in real estate, few have rolled up their sleeves for something as ambitious.
As I step inside the completed four-storey property, I catch a glimpse of the 25-metre pool in the garden, a non-negotiable for Sachdev, a keen swimmer. A bowl of goggles sits in the middle of the outside table. The kitchen side is filled with electric appliances designed by Dolce & Gabbana. Classical music hums through the network of slick speakers.
The interior is minimalist, all wooden furniture and white walls. In the basement there is a gym. Sachdev’s Portuguese personal trainer also works with English football players Jadon Sancho and Rio Ferdinand, he says.
On a tour, he tells me to touch the trunk of one of his garden statues of the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesh, a nod to his heritage, for luck. “I have a great antiquities dealer,” says Sachdev, as if I might have doubted it.
Within 30 minutes of the photographer arriving, Sachdev, 51, has invited him to snap his birthday party the following week. Champagne from the year of his birth will be served. “Everything is an opportunity, it’s never a burden,” says Sachdev. “My kids say I’m toxically positive.”
Sachdev is channelling that positivity into a bet that the opportunity in Santa Bárbara de Nexe will pay off. He believes the region has the potential to become the “California of Europe”. United Airlines started a seasonal direct flight from New York to Faro airport, 15 minutes from the plot, last spring in response to an influx of Americans to the region. Indeed, it has the same sunny climate as the Golden State.
Sachdev’s venture here is an extension of what he has quietly been doing in London for 20 years. He lived in Hackney before it was cool, where he met his neighbour and business partner, and the pair co-invested in real estate in the burgeoning area. “I found it fascinating from an entrepreneurial perspective,” says Sachdev. “The whole thesis of my career is no different to property investing . . . you have to be entrepreneurial, you have to be thoughtful about risk, and you have to hustle.”
His business partner, who has also built his own house on the plot and lives there, manages the development day-to-day. The pair have hired local builders, architects and interior designers. Portugal is “very open to external investment. There’s a lot of local talent here,” says Sachdev.
While real estate is always a bet, the country has gained a reputation for its friendly attitude towards wealthy individuals over the past 14 years. More than 12,700 golden visas — residency in exchange for investment — have been granted, not including family members, since the Portuguese programme started in 2012, according to government statistics.
Covid-19 spurred Portugal’s popularity further as people rethought their lifestyle set-ups. The most sought-after schools in Lisbon, two and a half hours north of Santa Bárbara, have waiting lists as demand outpaces supply, the International School Advisor, a schools search engine, said in April.
Houses in the Algarve have increased from an average asking price of €2,367 per square metre in December 2020 to more than €4,000 this year, according to online real estate platform Idealista.
Sachdev says that he saw the main risk as being whether the bottom dropped out of the Algarve market while they were building. However, the project was partly personal — driven by the advice of a client to create a place that appealed to his kids to spend time with him as they got older. Sachdev says, “We will be very, very exclusive about who we sell to.”
Jack Harris, a partner at Knight Frank, said that supply still hasn’t caught up with demand for real estate in Portugal post-financial crisis. He also notes a lot of national interest in the Algarve; Santa Bárbara is a more peripheral neighbourhood that is expected to appreciate. “The standalone detached villas . . . are the most attractive product.”
Unlike some of the neighbouring towns that are populated with celebrities, business people and athletes — retired footballer Luís Figo’s house is visible on a far hilltop from Sachdev’s house — Santa Bárbara feels less polished and has more local life.
“I don’t want to sit in Nobu here. I want to sit in the local beach shack and eat the best octopus in the world,” says Sachdev. “Also, it doesn’t shut down. A lot of the islands in Europe, they sort of shut down for winter. We like coming here for Christmas and going for walks on the beach.”
The town, a five-minute walk away, has a clutch of restaurants, cafés, a mechanic and even a vet, with an old church in the centre. There is little glamour but lots of old-style charm. A plaque on the wall of one restaurant dates it to 1895. Sachdev has been trying to purchase the entire row. The local owners aren’t willing to sell.
We bypass the town and drive in Sachdev’s Range Rover to lunch at a popular place, 2 Passos, near the beach. It’s fully booked this time of year, but a quick call to local fixer — Simon, the “sheriff of Santa Bárbara” — and we’re eating octopus salad and king prawns.
Life was not always this way. Sachdev’s Indian parents emigrated from Kenya to the UK in the 1970s when Idi Amin, the “butcher of Uganda”, was expelling South Asians from his country. His father had worked in an oil refinery and his mother was a teacher, but without equivalent UK qualifications they started a corner shop in London’s Clerkenwell, an inner-city suburb on the cusp of regeneration.
Every day at 5am, the shop would deliver newspapers to Alexander McQueen and other local fashion houses. Sachdev would help out in school holidays. “What I learnt from my parents, including working in the shop . . . was just service . . . just be responsive, be helpful,” he says.
Sachdev’s parents prioritised education, spending most of their income on their children’s private school fees. His background was never highlighted at the prestigious City of London School, he says, but became more of a differentiator when he started at UK “magic circle” law firm Freshfields. “Nobody looked like me,” says Sachdev. “All the partners were: white man, grey suit. So I felt more left out there.”
I ask Sachdev between sips of Aperol Spritz what he’s going to do when he retires from the law. UK lawyers tend to leave the profession by 60. “I’ve always wanted to run for London mayor”.
Sachdev thinks he could make the city more attractive to the ultra-wealthy again, while also ensuring money is fed back into the state.
I’m tempted to view the conversation as a flight of fancy, but the morning after I arrive back in London I see he’s sent me a text: “Epic day with the FT!! Thinking about London mayor too . . . ”