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How Women Are Shaking Up the Property Market
By Karen Glaser for Property Magazine
March 2022
With International Women’s Day on 8 March, now is the perfect time to highlight the achievements of female landlords. Karen Glaser talks to the women who have made the private rented sector work for them.
Charlotte Duck is a member of an ever-growing club. Women now make up almost one in two of Britain's 2.6 million buy-to-let (BTL) landlords, and over the past five years, their rental income has increased almost twice as fast as men's, according to research from estate agent Ludlow Thompson. This is heartening news with International Women's Day on 8 March, the time we celebrate women's social, economic, cultural and political achievements.
Charlotte is what you might call an accidental landlord. When she bought her first property in 2007, it was for her, and her alone, to live in. Which she did for 18 months. Then she met Dan, moved in with him and rented the one-bedroom Stockwell flat to a friend who needed to move in somewhere quickly. "It was a good way of testing the water with Dan, who also owned a flat in Stockwell. If living together didn't work out, I could just return home. I told my friend to be on stand-by," says Charlotte.
Things did work out. The couple is now married with three children and living near Sevenoaks. But before they moved from London to Kent, they owned, at one point, three flats: the properties Charlotte and Dan had bought independently and one in Balham that they purchased together. They have since sold the Stockwell properties, but have kept the Balham residence, which they now rent out.
"My husband and I are both self-employed. He's a barrister, I'm a freelance journalist and our pensions are poor. This flat is effectively our financial security for the future," she explains. The flat is theirs, but its maintenance falls entirely to Charlotte, who recently joined the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) so that she could get landlord certification and keep abreast of property legislation. She also takes willing care of the human interaction that comes with being a landlord. "Dan doesn't like dealing with tenants, but I love it, and am very invested in making our property a nice home for them."
The appeal of bricks and mortar
The gender shift is arguably the biggest single change in the UK's BTL market this past half century: in 1970, women could be refused a mortgage without a male guarantor. Compare that with four years ago, when 40 per cent of landlords were women, a study by Simple Landlords Insurance found; now we are up to 48 per cent. When we mark International Women's Day next year, maybe the gender split in BTL ownership will have narrowed to 50:50. And it looks likely that the NRLA women’s membership, currently 40 per cent, will have followed suit.
The Ludlow Thompson survey also found that women favour property over investments such as stocks, shares and cryptocurrency. But why do women choose property as a route to financial independence? What is it about bricks and mortar that appeals so strongly? For Charlotte, it's the tangibility of property. "I feel comfortable investing money in something I can physically see.
I'm always thinking about how I can upgrade the flat with new fixtures and fittings and so on, planning how I get things done between tenancies."
Article pages from Property Magazine by the National Residential Landlord Association.
Reaping the rewards
Her words are echoed by Alison Oliver, who has a one-bed rental in Luton. "I think house and home really speak to women. I'm certainly always talking about properties with my female friends, and I think home improvement programmes like Changing Rooms and Homes Under the Hammer have a predominantly female market."
"Well, it's better to rely on property than on men!" half-jokes Kiran Sandhu, who recently went from working as a full-time solicitor to overseeing the conversion of a pub, left by her late father, into nine rental apartments. "Dad passed away a couple of months before we went into lockdown. It was obviously the worst of times to move into the hospitality industry. I knew he'd got planning permission for flats on the site, so I dug out the plans and handed them over to my architect husband who'd recently been made redundant. Suddenly, he had a lockdown project."
But it was Kiran who oversaw the financial administration of the development. "Dad left the pub to my mum, so I had to buy it from his estate. By reading the NRLA's magazines I learnt about tax, title splits, planning and creative ways of purchasing a property by putting down no money." And she learned most effectively. When her father died, his pub was worth £305,000. Just over a year later it was valued at £1.2m. Since then, Kiran has also got planning permission for the beer garden, increasing its value from £80,000 to £300,000, and brining its gross development value to £1.3m.
"I'm the youngest of four siblings and the only girl. When I started thinking about buying the pub from my mum, I asked my brothers if they wanted to come in with me. They all declined, saying my business venture was too risky."
While they must now surely regret their decision, their sister could not feel more positive about her financial future. "Property is the best investment a woman can make. The longer you have it, the more value it accrues. I now feel in complete control of my life and would never return to my nine-to-five job. And because I am a trained solicitor, if I do have any letting issues, I can do my own legal work." Kiran's first lettings are also thanks to NRLA know-how. "I rented all nine flats via the new Portfolio platform, saving myself £800 in agents' fees and a lot of time figuring out how to advertise the properties online. And people have actually paid over the rental asking price.”
Fulfilling A Lifelong Ambition
Over in South Shields, Devon Parker also makes frequent use of the NRLA'S templates, documentation and credit-checking facilities. She has a background in banking, worked as a management consultant and still does some financial consultancy part-time. But she knew from the age of 14 that she wanted to work in property and began dabbling in investments when she was 17. Now she runs Classhouse, a property development business - a mixture of BTL and new build - in South Shields, where she was born and bred.
"I've lived in London and owned property there, but knew I always wanted to build a portfolio in my hometown. I love the idea that you can make money while providing people with good-quality, stable housing. I think a poor-quality home is often the start of other problems in a person's life." To this end, she refurbishes her BTL properties from head to toe, and gives them a polished, contemporary finish - white walls, grey carpets, dark wood worktops. But she is happy for her tenants to redecorate according to their taste.
"I really want my properties to feel like people's homes." The majority of her tenants are women, and right now 80 per cent of the people on her long waiting list are, too. "I haven't planned it like this, but maybe women prefer renting from other women? I'm very active on social media, so women in South Shields who are looking to rent are likely to have heard of me."
Our copy of the quarterly magazine.
Meanwhile, when contractors meet her for the first time, they often assume Devon is her father's assistant. They are actually partners in the firm, but he has always worked in construction, so now looks after the building side of Classhouse, while Devon takes care of marketing and general strategy. "To be fair, when I tell people that, no, I'm not Dad's assistant, this is our business, they generally say ‘oh, you look too young, but good for you!’”
She adds that she has never come across any blatant sexism in the property community. “I’ve always found it friendly and uncompetitive. I follow a lot of property professionals on Facebook and Instagram, and always get considered answers to the questions I, for my part, am never shy of asking. Most landlords and developers actually want to make a difference, to provide a good product.”
Head of Hound Resources Biscuit appreciating our article feature.
Ethical letting
Lorraine Thomas is certainly making a difference in Croydon. She and business partner Delores Coombs, managing director of Step Ahead, buy up properties that they then transform into homes for youngsters who have grown up in care, and other people in difficult circumstances, including refugees.
"I am on a mission to get people into the kinds of homes that wouldn't normally be within their reach," she says. However, Lorraine is also an accidental landlord. "Until five years ago, I used to do marketing for law firms, but after Delores and I bought our first property at auction together, ethical letting is all I have wanted to do.
"We know that our tenants won't always be able to pay the rent, but we've factored this into our business plan. And when they can't pay it, we offer them an affordable payment plan and work such as gardening and painting so they feel they have paid their rent in kind." Since 2017, Lorraine and Delores have housed more than two dozen people and now plan to open an academy to train vulnerable youngsters in trades connected to the construction industry.
"Our philosophy is that if you treat people right and give them proper opportunities, they generally come good."
