Harry Hyams is an English millionaire who made his fortune as a speculative property

Real property

In English Common Law, real property, real estate, realty, or immovable property is any subset of land that has been legally defined and the improvements to it made by human efforts: any buildings, machinery, wells, dams, ponds, mines, canals, roads, various property rights, and so forth...

 (real estate

Real estate

In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...

) developer. He is best known as the developer of the Centre Point

Centre Point

Centre Point is a substantial concrete and glass office building in central London, England, occupying 101-103 New Oxford Street, WC1, close to St Giles Circus and almost directly above Tottenham Court Road tube station. The site was once occupied by a gallows...

 office building in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. He is considered to be reclusive, and is the long-term owner and resident of Ramsbury Manor

Ramsbury Manor

Ramsbury Manor is a country house at Ramsbury, Wiltshire, in the south of England, now a Grade I listed building.The house was built in 1680 by John Webb, a son-in-law of Inigo Jones...

, near Marlborough in Wiltshire

Wiltshire

Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...

. In 2008 a raid at Ramsbury Manor by the Johnson Gang

The Johnson Gang

The Johnson Gang is the collective name for a group of English criminals from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire who specialised in stealing fine art and antiques from English country houses over a period of 20 years. The goods they stole are estimated to be worth between £30 million and £80 million...

was described as the biggest ever private burglary in England.

Hyams’ approach to property development

Hyams made much of his fortune developing office space in London at a time in the 1960s and 1970s when rents there were rising significantly. He preferred to find single, blue-chip tenants for his properties, having them fully repair and insure the buildings they occupied, as is common with commercial property in the UK. This approach enabled Hyams to manage a valuable and sizable property business with a staff of just six. It was also used by Hyams as justification for keeping his Centre Point development empty for years after completion – he claimed he could find no tenant willing to lease all 202000 sq ft (18,766.4 m²) of space.

Praise and controversy

Hyams has met with both praise and controversy for his approach. Property developer Sir Stuart Lipton has called him “the first man to recognise the importance of skilled planning and development”. But Hyams and his building Centre Point became a focus for protest against what some saw as the greed of profit-driven developers.

External links

News reports about Ramsbury Manor thefts: http://news.scotsman.com/arts.cfm?id=171132006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/4673840.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6036753.stm