Profile: John Reeves

A property investor with a maverick streak, John Reeves is not your average businessman. Lizzie Murphy met the Helmsley Group chairman.
John Reeves, chairman of the Helmsley Group in York. Picture: Gary LongbottomJohn Reeves, chairman of the Helmsley Group in York. Picture: Gary Longbottom
John Reeves, chairman of the Helmsley Group in York. Picture: Gary Longbottom

JOHN Reeves is regaling me with tales from his recent motorcycle trip to the Himalayas where two of his friends broke various bones trying to cross a gorge.

“One tried to ride over a bridge that wasn’t there and smashed his collarbone and shoulder. The other one saw him go over and dropped his bike, smashed his ribs and broke his leg,” he says cheerfully from the comfort of his York office.

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Apparently this is very normal in Reeves’ world and I’m relieved to hear they are both fine now.

Once or twice a year he travels with friends on motorcycles to ‘some wild, godforesaken spot’, which has included Mongolia, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. “I’m out of contact in a different world that’s completely alien to me and I like that,” he says.

“It’s almost guaranteed that two of us will be brought home on an emergency flight. We’ve had people with broken backs, you name it, we’ve had everything, but it’s still great fun.”

His love of adventure was ignited a few years ago following a brush with cancer. “I have no doubt it will come back and that’s one of the reasons I go on these trips,” he says.

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Reeves, 61, is chairman of York-based Helmsley Group, a company which invests the wealth of rich individuals with the aim of providing a better return than the bank.

The business, which has a syndicated property portfolio worth more than £150m, owns 75 per cent of York’s prime office stock as well as bars and restaurants along the river.

He describes himself as himself as ‘lucky’. “I’ve been in the right place at the right time and I’ve never really planned my career,” he says.

Born in Bishop Auckland, he moved almost immediately to Germany with his army father and mother.

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The family later returned to the North to become farmers, and Reeves was educated in Darlington, Newcastle and Sedbergh.

He was expelled from both primary and secondary school, the first for chopping through a tree in the playground which fell onto a neighbour’s tennis court and the second when he was caught smoking cannabis on the school roof during a fire practice. “It was one of those things,” he says dismissively.

He left home at 18 to work in Middlesbrough as an estate agent. After completing his chartered surveying exams, he spent five years in London with Hiller Parker May and Rowden, before heading north as a director of Jackson Stopps’ York office and later, Sanderson Townend.

Reeves joined the Helmsley Group over 20 years ago as a partner with its founder Andrew Overington. The company had started out by offering merchant banking and lending facilities but following Overington’s unexpected death a few years later, Reeves took control and expanded the company into property syndication.

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“Syndicated property with no borrowing was a really good idea,” he says. “It’s the same principal as crowdfunding. It’s obvious, like all ideas, but a lot of people didn’t do it because they couldn’t get the capital.”

The key to its success, he says, is finding investments that are “relatively low risk”.

While syndicated investments make up 70 per cent of the business, Helmsley also lends money to other developers and develops its own property.

“The key is that there is no borrowing,” says Reeves. “Everything is paid for so if things go wrong we can ride the storm without pressure from the banks. That reduces an enormous amount of risk for investors.”

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One of the biggest challenges is the economic uncertainty affecting the office market. “The world is in turmoil and it’s making people put off decisions,” says Reeves.

“We’ve never had so many office enquiries but not one of them has signed a lease on a property.”

Permitted development rights, which the Government brought in to kickstart residential development in 2013, have proved to be a game-changer for Helmsley, which has started converting empty offices into homes.

It began with a 1960s eyesore building in the centre of York, now known as The Walk. Now Reeves has turned his attention to transforming Clifton Moor industrial estate, two miles from the centre of York, into a starter home hub.

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Reeves’ unlikely idea has been a success thanks to the location and close amenities. “The demand is huge,” he says, “You can’t buy a flat for £130,000 in York.”

Reeves is keen to do more office-to-residential conversions but property prices have shot up. “It makes it much more difficult to deliver a building that’s affordable,” he says.

He believes conversions in the city centre have gone far enough. “We could be irresponsible and convert all of our office buildings to residential and there’s little the planners could do about it but we’re not going to. We have a social conscience,” he says.

Helmsley operates at the two extremes of the residential market. Another recent triumph is York’s most expensive new-build home, the £1.85m King’s Guinea, which overlooks the Knavesmire.

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The father of three grown up children and grandfather-of-two, lives in York with his wife, Karen.

He admits he is ‘a bit eccentric’. “I’m not your traditional businessman, probably because I treat my clients more like friends than clients and I have unusual hobbies.”

Looking to the future, he says he sees himself ‘slowing down’. “There’s no doubt as you get older you get stuck in your ways. It’s right that I hand over the reigns in the next five years.”

John Reeves Fact File

Title: Chairman of The Helmsley Group in York

Date of birth: April 13, 1956

Education: Sedbergh School in Cumbria.

First job: Working as a junior surveyor on oil rigs at Rothesay Point in Scotland.

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Favourite holiday destination: Mongolia for adventure, or Majorca with my wife.

Favourite film: It’s A Wonderful Life

Favourite song: What a Wonderful World, by Joey Ramone

Last book read: The Stand, by Stephen King

Car driven: Volkswagen Scirocco. I’m not interested in cars, I like motorbikes.

Most proud of: My kids.

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