The Heir Hunters star has prospered from property and investing despite not caring much about money

I’m the founder of Finders International, which tracks down family members of people who die without a will, and feature a lot on BBC One’s Heir Hunters programme.

The heir hunting market isn’t massive; the UK market is probably worth less than £50m and ours is one of the biggest companies with a turnover of about £5m. I pay myself a salary of £120,000 and also dividends as and when I need them, usually about £30,000 a year.

I don’t get paid by the BBC for Heir Hunters. The show promotes the business to the public – because it’s on during the day it’s most popular with students and the elderly.

In 1983 when I was 19 I took advantage of Margaret Thatcher’s 110% mortgage scheme and bought a one-bedroom maisonette in Tooting for £17,000. I sold it a few years later for £90,000.

About 15 years ago I bought a property in Chelsea for £700,000, did it up and sold it for £1.5m.

Then I bought our current home in Highbury for £950,000. It’s a 1930s semi but very modern inside. It’s worth about £2.5m now. I spent about £30,000 building an outhouse in the garden which is a gym with a cross-trainer, rowing machine and weights. My wife and children use it too. I have four children aged from six to 24 – two boys and two girls.

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We’ve paid off the mortgage but I took out a £800,000 loan against the house to help my two eldest children on to the property ladder. I bought my daughter a one-bedroom flat in Highbury and my son a one-bedroom flat in Battersea. They’re quite modest ex-local authority properties and I’ve signed them over to the children.

My wife is from Denmark and her family still live over there. It’s tricky for non-residents to buy property in Denmark but there are a small number of new-build apartments you can buy each year “without living obligation”. So we bought a two-bed flat for £300,000 about 10 years ago. We’ve paid the mortgage off and it’s probably worth about £450,000 now.

My company owns two floors of our building near Old Street. Prices have gone crazy around there and the building is probably worth more than £4m now. I’ve just been lucky with my property investments – there’s no science behind it.

I’ve never been particularly incentivised by, or cared about, money. Even when I left school I just worked and did something I enjoy. Spending money is more of a practical thing.

My 11-year-old daughter Mille has a problem with her hearing and we were concerned she would struggle to hear in a state school with 30 kids in a class, while private schools wanted her to take the seven-plus exam. So, five years ago, together with some friends, we started a small private Danish school called Dania School. My company put in £80,000 and it’s a registered charity.

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I mainly invest in the US stock market, mostly in large corporates such as Apple, and I’ve put in about £500,000 which has doubled.

But one mistake I made was selling the office to a Sipp (self-invested) pension fund. I didn’t realise the Sipp then dictates the rent charged, and I ended up buying the office back for the company. You can’t save more than £1m in a pension without being taxed so I will need to withdraw 25% next year when I’m 55 to avoid this.

The only inheritance I ever received was £100 in premium bonds from my grandfather who fought in the second world war and died in the 1990s. I have also invested the maximum £40,000 in premium bonds since, which usually equates to a decent investment return with a bit of fun attached to it.

I like to spend my money on travel and often pay for holidays for my family, including my wife’s family in Denmark, to stay in a nice villa. I can afford to travel business class now. I like to go to nice restaurants and have good holidays. I don’t have fancy cars – I have one electric car and one hybrid car, both Kias.