Still a family affair and still thriving
With 55 years in business under their belt, the Pickard family is the biggest private landlord of student lets in Leeds and now they have taken it to a new level. Sharon Dale reports.
IT’S funny how life turns out and a good example is Brian Pickard, who started working life as an electrician in a job that took him all over the country. After marrying his wife Barbara and having children, he was desperate to ditch his itinerant lifestyle so he could be permanently based in Leeds with his family.
Quite what he would do to earn a decent crust back in Yorkshire had not been decided and he was still scratching his head about it when he and Barbara hired a babysitter who also happened to be a university student.
“She told us how hard it was to find student accommodation and that’s when I thought having a rental property would be ideal because it was something I could manage from home,” says Brian.
The money for it came from remortgaging a bungalow he had built for his mum and in 1968, he and Barbara bought their first rental property in Rawdon, long before investing in a buy-tolet became mainstream for the masses.
It turned out all right, though the couple swiftly realised Rawdon wasn’t a student area and switched their attention to buying properties in Headingley and turning them into bedsits for students.
The rest, as they say, is history. Over the past 55 years, Pickard Properties has got bigger and better and is now the largest private student landlord in Leeds and an early pioneer in the city’s now booming build-to-rent market.
It’s a far cry from the early days when Brian bought a milk round to supplement his income. “I got up at 5am to deliver the milk and I was finished by lunchtime so I had the afternoon to work on the properties,” he says. This, along with continually re-mortgaging the family home to buy more houses, turned a small enterprise into a large, thriving and well-respected business.
Brian and Barbara have since been joined by their sons, Miles and Simon, their daughter, Catherine and her husband, and the family is now celebrating its latest and largest development. Carlton Hill is a 604-bed, purpose-built and sustainable student apartment development, close to Leeds city centre.
That brings the Pickard Properties portfolio to 580 student rooms in shared houses, 1,000 in new, purpose-built student accommodation plus 200 build-to-rent houses and apartments, which includes those at Spinning Acres in Headingley. Altogether, it has been over half a century of riding the ups and downs of the market. Low points included the Rent Act in the 1960s, which introduced regulated tenancies with “fair rents” set by independent rent officers. Whether they were fair or not, it was almost impossible for landlords to challenge them.
The winter of discontent in 1978 was also a shocker as inflation rose by 26 per cent and interest rates shot up by 15 per cent, though within 18 months there was a boom in home ownership.
“House prices almost doubled then so we went back to the bank and bought more properties,” says Brian, who remembers the days when no fridge, no central heating and no double glazing were the norm and safety certificates did not exist.
Burglaries were also commonplace in the early days and Brian deduced that the thieves were after TVs. That receded when TVs became commonplace and less expensive. The Housing Act 1988 also brought better news for landlords when the government abolished the Rent Act so rents were unregulated.
Carrying on regardless through it all plus hard work, an entrepreneurial spirit and a great sense of humour are the secrets of the Pickards’ success, along with looking after their tenants. They have also been quick to pick up on trends and swift to adapt to new technology.
“We are happy to show students round in person but these days most of them want virtual tours and the ability to sign up for a property online,” they say.
Brian rates students as “good payers” estimating that 99 per cent pay their rents on time and in full, while professional tenants are less reliable, though Catherine adds: “The students come to us at the age of 18 or 19 having just left home and so they can sometimes be disorganised and we have to look after them.”
That’s something they won’t have to worry about with Carlton Hill. It will be leased and managed by the student charity and operator Unipol for the use of University of Leeds students.
It replaces a 239-bed student accommodation block owned by Pickard Properties, which was demolished to make way for this new contemporary scheme.
Designed by Halliday Clark Architects and built by GMI Construction, the project was managed by Fox Lloyd Jones with planning consultancy advice from Quod.
It is on one of the most sustainable new student schemes in the city having secured an EPC A rating, thanks to insulation, solar power and air source heat pumps.
The development has also been designed to encourage student wellbeing with social spaces for residents, larger than standard bedrooms and living spaces, a gym, ‘sky gardens’ and a roof terrace.
The family is proud of it and, as ever, it was a team effort. “We still have weekly meetings. It was just us five including mum and dad and now it’s us and 25 staff,” says Catherine. As for what’s next, she adds: “Who knows? Dad still loves property shopping and looking for opportunities.”