Foxtons founder Jon Hunt revealed as wealthiest agency figure
Jon Hunt increased his wealth by £45 million last year, making him worth £1.345 billion - more than Purplebricks, Countrywide and OTM combined.
Foxtons founder Jon Hunt has been named as the 126th richest person in the UK in the latest iteration of the Sunday Times Rich List.
Hunt, who is said to be worth £1.345 billion, has increased his wealth by £45 million over the past 12 months.
But such eye-watering sums haven’t stopped him slipping down the list from 111th.
The Colchester-born businessman started out in property during the mid-1970s aged just 19 year old when he bought a flat in Woking for £4,500, selling it for £7,750 two years later.
After a spell in the army, the 28-eyear-old Hunt returned to work at a Guildford estate agency before setting up Foxtons in 1981 with friend Anthony Pelligrinelli within a converted former Italian restaurant in Notting Hill in West London.
Suffolk village
Foxtons, which take its name from a village in Suffolk near his family home, was sold to City investment firm BC Partners for £375 million in 2007.
Since then Hunt has used his money from the sale to good effect, investing heavily in central London commercial and residential property, and more recent establishing a new membership club in Kensington for business people called Pavilion.
He has also endured several high-profile disasters including his £900,000 Lamborghini catching fire and a high-profile run-in with Kensington & Chelsea council over his plans to build a mega-basement to house his large super-car collection.
In an interview with The Negotiator in 2017, former protégé Peter Rollings said he was ‘very direct’ as a perosn but was a ‘forward thinker’ who ‘changed the property market’.
But Hunt is some way behind the other big property names on the list, most notably the Reuben brothers who are said to be worth £21.46 billion, making them the second richest in the UK.
