How My Investor Made Me Bankrupt (C’est La Vie)

I started in properties like my father before me with a trial project. He sought an eight-room boarding house in the east end of London in 1956 while I went west in 2006. I’d buy an ex-council flat at auction from a debt-strapped homeowner in Kensington and Chelsea, then; I’d gut and completely renovate it before flogging it on the open market to the highest bidder. My first client was Andrew Simpson — a billionaire American businessman.

Billionaire Andrew Simpson loved a fat after dinner cigar with his cognac. I could barely sit through the smoke.

He wanted a flat for his eldest daughter, Britney, who had just started university at Chelsea School of Art and Design. It just so happened that I had the only “perfect one-bed apartment” overlooking Battersea Bridge with a spectacular view along the River Thames. All we had to do was agree on a price, and Britney could literally walk to school in under three minutes from now on.

There were no estate agents involved in our deal. I’d bought the property at auction for £74,000, spent £46,000 doing it up, and was selling it to him for a cool quarter of a million. But I also wanted advice and contacts, and he was glad…