Jesper Höstrup spent most of his international career – around 30 years –  in the Swedish foreign service and the EU institutions. He has subsequently continued his activities in Brussels as a property investor.

Jesper was born in Halmstad, Sweden. He is married and has two children. After graduating from Uppsala university in 1982 with a degree in international economics and French, he pursued his post-graduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Following a brief stint in the private sector in international marketing, Jesper was in 1985 recruited to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Jesper went on to serve at the embassies in Beijing, Seoul, Athens and Bangkok, and as Counsellor and EU coordinator at the Asia directorate in Stockholm until 2000, when he was recruited as Principal Administrator to the EU Commission’s External Relations Directorate-General in Brussels.

For his services as Commercial Counsellor and Chargé d’Affaires in Bangkok, Jesper was in 2002 awarded the distinction: Knight Commander of the Most Noble Order of the Crown of Thailand.

Within the European Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) in Brussels, some of Jesper’s more noteworthy responsibilities included his six years in charge of the Iran Desk, and serving as the Commission’s Deputy Head of Protocol. Throughout the years, he also worked with the Middle East Peace Process, Bangladesh, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership.

In Brussels, Jesper Höstrup came to increasingly appreciate the many hidden – and often neglected – architectural gems in the city, and started wondering if he might be able to acquire and preserve at least a few of them. Lacking any experience in the field, Jesper was in this context merely armed with a few months of architectural studies – a long time ago – from the Lund Institute of Technology. However, both his parents were, in fact, architects.

Jesper initially bought a crumbling Louis XV-style “maison de maître” in central Brussels, and had it restored to regain its full historic cachet. Encouraged by this experience, he then went on to purchase and renovate a second period property in Brussels, a third one, and so forth; eventually spreading beyond Brussels to another Belgian city. In the process, he realized that an individual’s interest in reviving a traditional inner city landscape did not have to be incompatible with the building of a personal property portfolio; in his case consisting of houses from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Despite the indisputable attraction over a number of years of having had the privilege to deal with and play some small part in Swedish and European diplomatic affairs, Jesper’s budding real estate passion – and a need for more quality time – had by 2014 gained sufficient traction for him to decide to retire from public service, about eight years ahead of time. Since then, he has continued to invest in – and preserve – urban, characterful properties.