Andreas Panayiotou was born in London, the son of Cypriot parents. He started working for his father, before buying an Islington house, converting it into flats, and building one of the United Kingdom"s largest buy-to-let empires, selling about 7,000 flats and houses in 2006-2007, and moving into hotels.
He never really learnt to read and left school aged 14 without any qualifications. According to Panayiotou,
I was the largest private landlord in the United Kingdom. I was looking at the returns on my investment – they had been 25%-plus during that period. Then the market started to understand residential.
There was the buy-to-let phenomenon.. yields went from 25% to about 3% over the period.
To me, it became very straightforward. lieutenant wasn"t a good investment.
I found myself with a big war chest. Where do we go from there? The nearest asset class to residential is hotels.
Looking at hotels you can add more value, as against residential where, once it"s built and let, you"re relying on indexation on rents – with hotels you can improve facilities – build a gym, conference facilities.
His company, Ability Group, had seven hotels in 2011. As of June 2011, he has a £400 million Netto worth.
