In this episode of The Corner Office, John Jack | CEO of Galetti Corporate Real estate, dives deep into the journey of Murray Clark | Co-Founder & CEO of Neighbourgood, a community-led living and workspace platform operating across San Francisco, New Haven, and Cape Town. Today, Neighbourgood operates 1,300+ residential units and shared workspaces across three cities, with hotel-style amenities, curated community programming, and a membership model that activates buildings beyond their four walls. But how did he get here? His father was a builder, a good one, who spent his career working hard and struggling harder. When Murray dropped out of law school after a year, nobody would have predicted he'd spend the next two decades quietly reshaping how South Africans, and now Americans, think about the places they live and work. This episode of The Corner Office traces the full arc. From sitting outside a newspaper depot at 10pm on Saturday nights to get first access to the property classifieds, to buying a piece of land for R70,000 in Durban that turned out to have zoning for 20 units.From running an under-18 nightclub that got shut down by Durban North mums, to accidentally executing his first arbitrage deal at 17 when Curves Gym replaced the nightclub at triple the rent. From building 45 convenience shopping centres across rural South Africa, to losing R4 million on a Woodstock food hall and using that failure as the blueprint for what Neighbourgood has become. Today, Neighbourgood operates across Cape Town, Johannesburg, San Francisco, and New Haven, managing roughly 75 buildings and redefining what it means to rent in a city. The model is simple in concept and complex in execution: instead of paying for four walls and a key, Neighbourgood members get access to co-working spaces, health and wellness facilities, community events, brand partnerships, and a city-wide network of buildings, all for the same price as a standard apartment. Murray talks openly about what went wrong at Neighbourgood in Woodstock, why he walked away from a profitable shopping centre business after reading Jim Collins, how his father's death at 22 forced him to grow up overnight, and why he believes the future of living is a branded, city-wide experience that has nothing to do with hotels. He also gets into the numbers, cap rates in San Francisco, the opco-propco model, why Johannesburg is harder to crack than Cape Town, and why a strong local property partner is the single most important decision when entering a new city. This is a conversation about property, entrepreneurship, failure, reinvention, and what it looks like to build something you actually want to leave behind.
