Getting rich in the early 80s through property? How common?

[PinkPanther57]

How easy was it for a working class, uneducated but very street smart man to get become seriously rich via property deals in the early/mid 80s?

Mainly in London, working way up from the bottom and becoming a multi, multi millionaire within 5 years?

Would you suspect foul play or dodgy deals of some sort? How many legitimate multi millionaires were created around then through property deals?

Sadly he has passed away but a dear friend bought properties in Westcliff on Sea/Leigh on Sea/Chalkwell on Sea that were large houses but needed renovating and he turned them into flats to sell.

He made a lot of money from doing this.

My present husband at the time bought properties in that era as a sideline to his career but bought to let. That was also very lucrative.

I know of people in the early 90s who "took out" a deposit on a credit card & got a 95% mortgage when earning a normal wage. Or getting 100% mortgages, or interest only mortgages. A neighbour was wealthy from buying big houses in Battersea that were in flats & had sitting tenants, that was the 80s.

I think the big growth came in the 00s though. My parents house was about 60k in the mid 80s, they looked at selling it for 500k in the 90s & now it would probably go for 1.8m. I know of colleagues who made 1m in a couple of yrs. I was born that little bit too late, grrr!

We moved up from London in 1982 and my DF always said 18 months later and we could have bought a mansion where we settled (Midlands).

So there must have been a boom around 1985?

Most people with lots of difficulty in explaining why they have money are dodgy though 😉