They built up a £180m property empire in buy-to-let boom but now the suburban tycoons are selling up … do they know something we don’t?

Laura Powell, DailyMail.co.uk – 10 Oct 2009

This certainly doesn’t look like the stately pile of a billionaire. There’s no gold jacuzzi, no personal tanning salon (like Simon Cowell), no £16 million private jet (like Sir Philip Green), not even a Rolls-Royce (like Del Boy).

The only indication that the owners have a bob or two – as I pull up the gravel drive of an unremarkable suburban house in Boughton Monchelsea, near Maidstone, Kent – is the tired-looking Jaguar X-Type outside.

Even this, however, is parked next to a battered old Land Rover. So battered, in fact, that the wing mirrors are attached with sticky tape.

It is hard to believe that this is the home – albeit the second home and office – of Judith and Fergus Wilson, proud owners of a £180million property empire.
Humble: Judith and Fergus Wilson aren’t bothered about spending their millions

Humble: Judith and Fergus Wilson aren’t bothered about spending their millions

In fact, their fortune probably peaked at a staggering £250 million – although that doesn’t stop property experts labelling them Britain’s first buy-to-let billionaires.

They even overtook the Beckhams in the 2007 Sunday Times Husbands And Wives Rich List.

But you couldn’t tell from their lifestyles. They haven’t holidayed for more than 20 years – ‘Why would we want to leave Kent?’ – they shop at the local supermarket, and even their choice of biscuits, Rich Tea, is rather humble.

But they are now planning their biggest luxury to date: retirement.

Yes, property prices are up almost 8 per cent since March, and estate agents are urging budding landlords to buy now to cash in on rising rental prices – but the Wilsons have had enough.

And so the couple, who own between 700 and 900 houses – Fergus hasn’t counted recently – along the M20 corridor in Kent, are selling their entire portfolio. Which is rather worrying, given that Fergus ‘watches property like other men watch the football scores’ and that their acumen is so astute that they have made six people millionaires through their advice alone.

So is there something they’re not telling us? And is the future of the property market rather dicier than we have been led to believe?

‘Why we’re retiring now is no big secret,’ says Fergus, solemnly. ‘I’d happily keep going, but Judith tells me I can’t rule from the grave, so we have to sell at some point. And right now isn’t a bad time to sell.

‘The difference between interest rates and rent prices will never be as good as it is now so if we sell, we’ll make more profit than we will any other time in the near future.’

Fergus, 61, is also adamant that their fortune has stood relatively steady against the recession. In fact, he believes that as their properties appreciate, their wealth is increasing by a mind-blowing £70,000 a day.

After buying their first houses in 1986, the Wilsons rode the boom until 2003 when they hit their peak and amassed 180 houses in one year – mainly two and three- bedroom properties with neat front lawns and magnolia paintwork.

They finally stopped buying in May, after bagging one final bargain: a detached house in Ashford that no one else would buy because ‘it was painted silly colours’.

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