How Jonathan Hey made a fortune flipping homes

Undeterred by the booms and busts of the housing market, Jonathan Hey has built a multi-million pound business in installing luxury 'garden rooms'.

In the early 1980s, Jonathan Hey knew an easy way to make money "buy a house, do it up and sell it". The property market was in good health, and the process was made all the more profitable because the government of the time was handing out grants to homeowners to build indoor toilets.

In 1981 a lot of houses still just had outside toilets. The only trouble was that Hey, then 22, didn't have the money to buy a house. So he asked his employer, a farmer, to help him save.

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James McKeigue

James graduated from Keele University with a BA (Hons) in English literature and history, and has a certificate in journalism from the NCTJ. James has worked as a freelance journalist in various Latin American countries.He also had a spell at ITV, as welll as wring for Television Business International and covering the European equity markets for the Forbes.com London bureau. James has travelled extensively in emerging markets, reporting for international energy magazines such as Oil and Gas Investor, and institutional publications such as the Commonwealth Business Environment Report. He is currently the managing editor of LatAm INVESTOR, the UK's only Latin American finance magazine.