Sarah Beeny talks building projects, the thrill of doing business and how matchmaking is in her blood
Sarah Beeny loves a good building site. The TV presenter, property developer, website entrepreneur and mother of four laughingly admits, ‘They kind of do it for me! I love the chaos of them and the fact that it’s all just mad when you’re on site.’ It’s lucky that she feels this way as, over the years, and more so recently, she’s spent a lot of time on building sites.
A large proportion of Sarah’s frighteningly busy schedule this year and last has been spent on one rather large building site – the mansion she and her husband, Graham own near Hull, which has a staggering 97 rooms! Sarah and Graham bought Rise Hall, an old school, 10 years ago and have been slowly arresting its decline ever since, in order to return the building to its glory days. ‘We bought Rise Hall before we had kids. When it was just the two of us we were incredibly flexible. I always imagined we’d live there eventually, full-time, one day.
We were going to move all our businesses there but various projects kept us in London, including my TV work. I thought I’d do a bit of telly and went backwards and forwards from Hull to London for a while, but Graham and I didn’t see each other much and we really missed each other. Eventually, I said, “Oh, sod it. Let’s just move back to London until this telly thing goes away,” and, well…’
This ‘telly thing’ shows no signs of going anywhere. The face of Channel 4’s Property Ladder for 10 years, her new show, Help! My House is Falling Down has just aired on Channel 4, and later this month, comes Beeny’s Restoration Nightmare, the personal story of Sarah and Graham’s mammoth task to save and restore Rise Hall.
Rescue mission
‘Before we bought Rise, it was falling down and no one wanted it,’ explains Sarah. ‘It didn’t stack up in many many ways. The problem is that it’s located too far to the north east, and it’s listed so you have to restore it and maintain it. If it wasn’t listed you’d just demolish most of it, which would be a lot simpler, and you’d end up with a six-bedroom house which would probably be worth more money. But we couldn’t do that and we didn’t really want to do that. We didn’t buy it to do that, we bought it because we wanted to see if you could save a building like that. There’s a lot of building there.
‘I also think it would be a tragedy if it was our generation that was responsible for just letting it fall down. There are a lot of materials there, a lot of time and effort has been invested in it and it’s been standing for 200 years. It’s not fit for purpose at the moment but in 100 years’ time, people might say, “Oh gosh, we really need a building like that because it would be great to have it as an old people’s home or even as a school again.”
Juggling act
With Sarah’s television work bringing her back to London much of the time and the subsequent births of her four sons, who go to nursery and school in south London, Sarah admits buying Rise Hall involved ‘a massive lack of planning! I didn’t really think about children before I had them and that’s the biggest thing I underestimated. The hardest thing was living in south London with Rise Hall being in Hull and the distance between them. Trying to juggle a family with that was so stressful. Graham and I would go up at least once a week during the week. We’d leave at six in the morning, get back at 10 at night and only have had four hours on site, during which time there’d be 30 contractors we’d have to go and see, do this, do that, do this, do that and then rush back home. It sounds pathetic but it was really complicated trying to combine a family with a site too far away.
‘During school term, we have to be based in one place, which was never the case before we had kids. The only reason we didn’t go and live in Hull was because the kids are at school in London and I didn’t want to pull them out because they love it. ‘Rise has now become massively surplus to requirements, which is why we had to move on and give it a purpose. It > wasn’t being used and it needed to be, and we thought it would make a great wedding venue. If we’d been living there, it would have been easier to manage, but having weddings there will be a really good thing because the house needs filling up. By giving it a new purpose – and it needs to work for itself – it’ll have an income attached to it and it’s a lovely home.’
Golden opportunities
Helping other people get their homes in shape has been key to Sarah’s success, but it may come as a surprise to hear that it’s not property or property development that really ignites her passion. ‘It’s actually business that I enjoy the most. I get such a buzz from Tepilo [Sarah’s recently launched website that allows people to take control of buying, selling or letting their property – with no charges or commission] because it’s so exciting and I’m in so much control of it.
‘Reading some of the emails from people who were desperate to move their lives on and desperate to sell their homes and then they have – they’re the highs. We get emails saying, “I’m so thankful, I’m so grateful.” I always say to my business partner, “Let’s put them on the website so people can read them.” But he argues, “No one’s going to know that we didn’t write that,” so we don’t put them on the site. But we know we’ve had those emails.’
The same scenario is true of Sarah’s dating website, mysinglefriend.com the success of which has changed the way online dating is seen in this country and is another of her success stories. Is it not something of a departure from her usual field of expertise? ‘Probably not, as far as my friends are concerned. I like setting people up – in fact I set someone up last week on a date. It’s difficult to meet people when you get older because, well, how are you going to meet them? If all your friends are paired off, and have children, they’ve got really busy lives. They’re not going out three times a week to the pub with a whole load of new mates that you can tag along with. It just doesn’t happen like that. But where the idea really came from is that I don’t like to miss opportunities that are out there.
‘Tepilo is like the housing equivalent of mysinglefriend. I see lots of similarities between them. It’s putting people together on mysinglefriend and it’s putting people who own houses and flats together on Tepilo. One of the reasons mysinglefriend works is because everyone who gets there wants to date, otherwise they wouldn’t be on it. And Tepilo is proving so successful because everyone who goes on it really wants to buy or really wants to sell. They’re all really positive. You wouldn’t go on Tepilo if you didn’t really want to buy a house. There are not a lot of time wasters, either buying or selling. They’re all in the right place to really do it.
‘Tepilo has been going just over a year and so far we’ve saved [home sellers] more than £2 million in fees. That’s the amount people would have had to pay had they sold through estate agents. Houses are selling really fast which is what’s so exciting about it. There’s something really amazing about how many are selling – it’s an incredibly high hit rate of people having their houses on – they have two, perhaps three, viewings and then they’re under offer and they go through and they sell.’
Expert view
When it comes to selling, how does Sarah feel the housing market is doing now? ‘I think there’s a funny concept about recovery. I don’t think that the market’s going to go up. It went up very suddenly, and for about 18 months, reached the top and then very quickly it crashed down a similar 30-40%, which is where it has stayed pretty much ever since. It goes up a little bit and then back down; but, in terms of recovery, it’s not going to get back up to where it was for a very long time – perhaps even 20 years. For now, I think – and I might be wrong – that it’s likely to continue bumping around where it is for another 10 years. I don’t think it’s going to drop by another 50% or anything.’
Getting it right
So what advice would Sarah give to her younger self if she was just attempting to step on the property ladder now? ‘God, that’s really difficult. The first property I bought was a split-level flat. I went in, worked through the night with my brother and my husband and we refurbished it in about 10 days. That’s the thing about being young. You can do that! But the advice I’d give is, don’t be stuck on thinking you need to be in a nice area – you don’t need to be next to a Starbucks or next to a tube when you’re 21 years old. Really, it’s not necessary. You can walk or get a bus! ‘I’d suggest going for a bit more size and a nicer property but a little bit further away. When you’re young you can make those compromises whereas when you get older you don’t want to so much. ‘It’s important not to confuse the location of a property with its position. Location is the issue when you’re talking about Hull and Rise Hall. Had Rise Hall been just outside the M25, it would have had a use years ago. It would have been a luxury corporate hotel or been turned into flats.
The reason it’s a problem is because of its location. Doing something like turning it into flats just doesn’t stack up financially. The previous owners owned it outright and the cost of turning it into flats was more than the value the flats would have achieved when they sold them.’ When it comes to buying and selling, what does she feel is the biggest mistake homebuyers make? ‘Underestimating how much work is going to cost. Because they like the house, they just bury their heads in the sand and do lots of wishful thinking. They don’t want to hear the truth.’
And sellers? ‘Overestimating how much their house is worth, and getting carried away. Some random person, an estate agent for instance, will put an imaginative figure in their head, and they’re already spending the money before they’ve sold. If they’ve been told they can sell for £250,000, they think, “Oh, with that much, we could do x or y.” ’ Then, when you tell them their home is, in fact, only worth £200,000 and that the person who valued was inexperienced and didn’t actually look at the fact that every other house on the street has sold for £200,000, they still feel like they’ve lost £50,000.’
On the horizon
Going back to her TV work, Sarah’s next venture, a series with the BBC, and due to be aired next year, is called Village SOS. ‘It’s very exciting. It’s about going into villages that are struggling but they have lottery funding to start businesses that will hopefully re-energise and reinvigorate them. We’re losing villages as people drift away.’ Filming for Village SOS is taking place all over the country, so just how does she fit it all in? ‘There’s a lot of chaos and I have to give up on things. I think that’s the key. I give up on having a tidy house, the office is bedlam and I give up a bit on seeing friends, which is rubbish but you can’t do all of it. I compartmentalise quite a lot. And I have an amazing nanny, Pam. She’s not someone who just babysits. She’s me when I’m not here. She does all the stuff I’d do if I was here and does it all without being told – and with a smile. When she leaves on a Friday night, it’s all organised and by Sunday night it’s chaos again. We absolutely trash the place!’
Perhaps, that’s why, when Sarah refers to her own interior design style as ‘French’, she adds, ‘Unfortunately, at the moment, it’s quite shabby and not that chic. When the children have left home, it’ll be more chic. But I think houses are for living in and that should be number one.’ With that, in walks Pam with Sarah’s youngest son, one-year-old Laurie. Sarah dashes off to pick up her third child, Rafferty, two, from nursery, and the all-important business of living continues apace in the Beeny household.
Pictures: john carey
