Entrepreneur who exchanged papers for properties looks to ‘buoyant’ future for buy-to-let

● Grant Property has survived turmoil to face bright outlook, co-founder believes

0 Grant says he caught the property bug after a sales role saw him move every couple of years, and he would buy, renovate and profitably sell on a home every time

Peter Grant started his career in the newspaper industry, focused on the circulation side of the business.

But it was during this period that he started sowing the seeds for forming Edinburgh property investment and management firm Grant Property.

Having done a degree in business studies in Aberdeen, he joined a local newspaper group as a sales rep, working his way up the ranks and being moved around the UK every couple of years. “Every time I moved to a new place, I’d buy a run-down property and then I’d do it up,” he recalls.

“Then, when I came to move, I would sell it at a profit. That kind of ‘got it in my blood’ a bit.

He also realised that it made him more money than his salary did.

He later spent a spell working for The Scotsman, which brought him back to Edinburgh. After doing a financebased MBA to diversify his skills, he spent time with John Menzies’ distribution arm in a role he describes as “poacherturned-gamekeeper”.

This was followed by a return to the newspaper industry, later being made redundant, but he felt “there was just something inside me