From zero to 1,000 managed properties for Whitegates franchisee Julian
When Julian Devine purchased his first Whitegates branch, it’s fair to say things were very different. Wet Wet Wet and D:Ream were top of the charts, Four Weddings and a Funeral was pulling in film fans at the box office – and you could buy a house in the UK for less than £60,000.
"Back then the average property price in Beeston was actually about £40,000," laughs Julian when reflecting on starting his first Whitegates office in Nottingham more than a quarter of a century ago in 1994.
Prior to embarking on his property career with Whitegates, Julian worked at a concrete manufacturer straight from school, before moving into financial services in the early 1990s. He admits to being anxious ahead of his initial induction as a new franchisee back in 1994 – but soon discovered a huge variety of people were also taking their first steps on the same journey.
When we went on the first induction course to effectively 'learn' property back in the 1990s, we were really quite nervous. But when we arrived, we discovered people from all walks of life – including an ex-pop star from the 1970s!
As well as property prices soaring during that time, the amount of legislation landlords have to comply with is also "night and day" – something that Julian and his team on are hand to help across their managed portfolio of almost 1,000 properties.
"The legislation is just completely different to what it was in 1994, and actually, over the past two years, we’ve seen more legislation introduced than ever before," reflects Julian, who is also the owner of Whitegates branches in Nottingham Sherwood and Heanor alongside fellow director Chris Davis.
"We actually didn’t do lettings or management when we purchased the Beeston office in 1994 as we were purely a sales agent – despite being a university town. Then, after about a month of people coming in and asking if we did lettings and us saying ‘no’, we sat down and I said 'I think we need to get into this lettings business'!"
So, we started our portfolio from nothing in Beeston. We got up to about 150 properties and then were approached by Nottingham University to take over their student accommodation management, so that boosted the portfolio significantly. We then took over an office in Stapleford, which was a Whitegates office, before acquiring an independent called Blowers Brothers which was more than 200 properties.
The Whitegates Heanor office followed for Julian, along with another 200 properties, before his most recent acquisition of McLean Property Services secured another 180 – taking his total portfolio across the three branches to within a whisker of 1,000 properties.
All of which begs the question: How on earth does Julian and his team manage such a substantial number of properties?
"It is a lot of work," smiles Julian. "You need good management staff with a particular organisational and diligent mindset. They have to be reactive, too.
"We get requests from landlords and from tenants, so you have to be a good communicator. If you can do all that and stay on top of legislation and everything else, you’ll do okay!
"We have good technology and great systems in place through being part of a franchise, so a lot of the work we were doing in the early days can be automated now. For instance, we use an automated repair reporting system so tenants can just jump online and let us know about an issue and we can deal with it on behalf of the landlord."
The benefits of the systems we’re able to use and be introduced to, we wouldn’t have if we weren’t part of The Property Franchise Group.