This woman's work

How do you go from renovating a couple of houses a year to a multi-million pound development in just one step?

This is the question I have come to Margate in the corner of Kent to answer. This is where I meet property developer Jane Debliek, who has done just that. Her last project was the conversion of a Victorian gaol into three flats. Her latest project is the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital, a combination of renovation and new build, involving 520 properties at a cost of £30m.

I don't come away with a definitive answer. "A big development is no different from a small development," explains Debliek. "It becomes easier because you don't have to do all the work. It's exactly the same people, there are just more of them. Whatever you are not good at, you employ someone to do.

"If you have agreed a price, you know how much it is costing you and how much you are selling them for. There's no way it can go wrong unless you are an idiot."

Perhaps the truth is that only someone like Debliek could make what her funder calls this ‘quantum leap'. A dyslexic, she ignores many of the more usual business conventions, and everything she needs is carried around in her head. "I sift out the information I need and leave it in my brain," she says.

"Jane works very differently to anyone I have worked with before," says David Seaton who has worked for Paigle Properties (Margate), the company Debliek set up at the start of this new project, for a month. This is reflected in the fact he has no job title - a financial director previously, he now helps Debliek with whatever is necessary. "It's all in her head. She knows what's going on, she's on top of it all. She works at ten times the pace. You have almost not finished the conversation and she's three conversations ahead of you."

I meet Debliek in the company's office, a shop opposite the hospital site. There are seagulls on the ceiling, green and white chandeliers and a nautical theme. More striking, however, is Debliek's red hair and flowing skirt. In keeping with her unique approach, there are no suits at Paigle Properties.

"A suit doesn't impress me. A briefcase definitely doesn't impress me," she tells me. "If someone comes to see me in a boilersuit, that does impress me, because they're prepared to get heir hands dirty, they know what they're doing."

Her down-to-earth style is a product of her early experiences in property development with her grandmother, a Romany Gypsy, who brought her up. "My mum didn't want me. She put me in a Dr Barnados home. My grandparents took me out when I was five," she says matter-of-factly.

Her apprenticeship involved pushing a Silver Cross pram around, being called to halt while her grandma retrieved some treasure from a skip. And property deals done with carrier bags full of cash, since her gran didn't trust banks. There was always a refurb on the go.

No degree in surveying or construction management for Debliek. She started working at 14 when she left school, although she studied interior design for a further year at college.

She washed up, worked on market stalls, and in a boutique.

In 1975, aged 21, her development career started when she bought her first house in Southend for £3,750, did it up and sold it a year later for twice that. Since then she has refurbished one or two houses a year, putting two daughters through public school on the proceeds. Until two years ago, she also had an antiques shop, and still dabbles in antiques. "The antiques are my little bonus," she confides, revealing that she also renovates chandeliers in her spare time.

This was her life until 2003, when she split up with her partner of 14 years. It was then that she decided to pursue her dream of renovating the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital. "I always wanted to do it, I always thought I could do it. I used to pass it as I was taking my daughter to school. It's a lovely property. I just knew it would work."

Once she had made her mind up that she would take on the project, there were two hurdles to get over: persuading the owner to sell; and finding the money. Debliek's charisma and a tremendous determination played a big part in making both these things happen.

"I phoned banks and they basically laughed," she remembers. No one would take a chance on a virtual beginner. Then a friend of a friend put her in touch with Singer & Friedlander, a merchant bank with a specialist division which lends on property deals.

Charles Mavor, managing director of the property division, remembers the day three years ago when Debliek arrived at his office. She had pink hair and carried plastic bags stuffed not with money like her gran, but with pages and pages of hand-written cash flow calculations.

It’s all in her head. she’s on top of it all. She works at ten times the pace

David Seaton, Paigle Properties

"It would have been easy on first meeting Jane not to take her seriously, to have made an instant judgement," says Mavor, "But it was very apparent as she began to talk through the scheme that not only did she have an unusual amount of enthusiasm, there was a really good deal there struggling to get out."

At that point the deal involved 152 units, 55 of which were for renovation. Debliek planned to sell off the new build and share the profits with the bank. But that turned out to be just a starting point. The deal grew and grew. And every time the deal grew, Debliek talked to the bank, and it came along too.

Now there will be 98 refurbished and 422 new build flats. They're all sold already and the construction programme has compressed from four to two years.

"Of all the banks I have ever met I think they are the nicest. They are quirky, a bit bohemian, very small and personal," says Debliek. "If there's a problem, we phone up and we talk and we deal with it."

Singer & Friedlander generally takes a hands-on approach as it will lend more money than other banks. So where others might lend 70-75%, Singer & Friedlander will lend 90-95%, its reward being a share of the profit. So its people are property specialists; Debliek's contact is a former QS.

The hard sell

So the finance side was in hand. Now she had to persuade the owner of the hospital, Luke Comer of Comer Homes, to sell. "He said he never sold a site in his life," says Debliek, indicating the struggle she faced in getting him to change his mind.

In fact Comer had done nothing with the property despite owning it for some years and had gone off Margate. Debliek pestered him for a whole year until he said: "If you are that desperate, go to my solicitors and do a deal."

So she took her solicitor to his solicitor's office, with no paperwork, and they worked on it all day, and for most of the evening until at 9pm the deal was almost done. But Comer wanted a £500,000 deposit. Debliek only had £100,000. But she persuaded him to sign anyway, although it apparently rested on whether she had any Irish blood in her. Luckily, her father was Irish. "If I had not had any Irish in me, I would have lost the site," she says. Such is the fickle nature of development.

With the finer points of the finance still to sort out, and no survey in place, Debliek admits to thinking "oh my God", but adds "there was no way I was losing it".

The Royal Sea Bathing Hospital is a building which just oozes history, proudly displaying the date it was founded, 1791, on its front. It was the first hospital to use sea bathing and sea air to treat tuberculosis, and you can still see the tunnels which carried sea water to indoor salt water baths.

It closed just 12 years ago, although when Debliek first looked round the building, guided by a caretaker and his torch, it was in quite a state. "It was like The Shining," she remembers.

Now the site is buzzing with workers. Under the front courtyard, a two-storey underground car park is taking shape. This cost £1.5m, or £10,000 per property to build, but has allowed for a greater density of dwellings.

Earth has been excavated around parts of the building so that its basement, which was underground, can also be converted to flats. There is a central enclosed courtyard and there will be two more once the development is complete. Some of the upper flats have conservatories and terraces. The properties range in price from studios at £90,000 up to a corner apartment with a vast terrace overlooking the sea for £460,000.

There is also a church, which had planning permission for four properties when Debliek bought it. But she has decided to keep it intact and let a local children's charity use it.

"I walked in here and said ‘There's no way we should touch it' . And if you did touch, it would be bad luck." Given that paigle is an old English word for a four-leaf clover, flirting with bad luck is definitely not what Debliek wants.

A suit doesn’t impress me. A briefcase definitely doesn’t
impress me

Jane Debliek

But it doesn't sound like the act of a hard-nosed developer to turn down the opportunity for more money. "I know its sounds stupid but I didn't do this for the money," says Debliek.

"I have done it because I wanted to do it. I like the building, I like the project. If you have made enough money, why be greedy and spoil something like this?"

After seemingly cruising through the financing and purchase of the hospital, I suggest that assembling a team of professionals when you haven't done it before must have been daunting. "I have always done building, I've always been around," responds Debliek. "It's not difficult if you interact with people and know what you are doing."

Her mantra is ‘small is good'. She wants to work with people who are enthusiastic and competent who are running their own firms.

Big companies mean slow decision making and poor teamwork. "If you work with one big company, you get competition between people and men are bitchy, believe me."

A key member of her team is her partner - in business and at home - John Dignam. Significantly, Dignam has added his experience of new build to the mix.

Shannons is the main contractor, a civils company rather than a building one which has never done renovations before. The way the firm works is more important to Debliek. "I cannot find English companies that work as well," she claims. She has brought in project manager Phil Little, who ran Comer Homes' Friern Barnet Hospital project, which was similar but more complex than this job. He worked initially for Debliek and now works for Shannons.

Little says he is enjoying this job because he is left in charge. "I feel I am in total control of everything that happens on site as far as building is concerned," he says. "I am not responsible to anyone else under the terms of the contract as far as site decisions are concerned. Things are done by dictatorship rather than by consensus."

Debliek, of course, knows everything that's going on. She's on site every day, which doesn't phase Little at all. "We endeavour to try and work with her rather than have a ‘them and us' attitude and that's the way it has been from the word go," he says.

Caring character

"People who work for Jane are treated well and the same is expected," says Seaton. "She is quite a caring sort of a character."

Not everyone comes up to scratch. And if that happens, they have to go, says Debliek, who has just sacked the QS. He was on site once a month for an hour to do his valuation, which might suit some clients, but not Debliek. "My gran always said watch your pennies," she says. "I want to know exactly what we have spent our money on."

The QS didn't get it. "He said to me: ‘You've got to give me some guidance on this. I have never worked in this situation before, it's bohemian to me.' I told him: ‘You're the one who's supposed to be giving me guidance. That's what I'm paying you for. If we all worked like you, we'd be bankrupt.'"

Bohemian her methods may be, but so far they have been successful. Paigle has now bought a site next to the hospital, as well as a grade II-listed building in Canterbury.

So what about that advice for would-be developers? "If you want to do something, go for it. But be prepared to work: 24 hours a day, no weekends or evenings off and no holidays." And it has to be something you enjoy. "I love old buildings," she says. "With this job, you have given something back, brought something back to life."

Then she reveals that as well as housing refurbishment, she has inherited the gift of fortune telling from her grandmother. The power to see into the future? Now that's a very useful skill in this game.