Interview boydens.co.uk 22 magnolia!’ ‘Don’t paint your house We catch up with TV presenter Laura Hamilton, of Channel 4’s A Place in the Sun, to chat about how she got into property development and her latest home renovation project. What first got you interested in property and home renovation? It happened by accident really when I was 19. I always had this thing from the age of 15 that I wanted to get onto the property ladder as soon as I could – not that I didn’t get on with my parents, I just wanted to buy somewhere! I was working at a shopping channel and had a permanent job, which meant I could get a mortgage. I’d saved £5,000 and there was a little one-bedroom flat that came up for sale at the end of my parents’ road. It needed a lot of work doing to it, but I thought this is it, so I bought it with the intention of doing it up. Three months later, the channel I was working at went bust and I lost my job and thought, what am I going to do? So I decided to do it up aesthetically, move back to my parents’ and let it out. That’s how I ended up falling into property. When I moved back home, I thought this is a good idea – having a property and letting it out, and saving up for another deposit. So losing a job, which could have been quite a negative thing, ended up turning into something positive. And then, who knew so many years later that I would end up bringing my TV career and love of property together? I’ve done up about 20 properties since. You’re probably best known for your work presenting Channel 4’s A Place in the Sun – of all the foreign destinations you’ve visited, which one ticks the most boxes for you if you chose to live abroad? We have a family house in San Pedro de Alcantara, just outside Puerto Banus in Spain, which I love going to. I really like Mallorca and the city of Palma, but in terms of a second home and spending time abroad, I really do love San Pedro, and I spend a lot of time there. My dad was born in South Africa and it was one of the places I filmed in for A Place in the Sun, and absolutely loved spending time there, too. There are also beautiful parts of Italy and France – I’m a big skier, so the idea of having a nice ski chalet apartment somewhere is nice. But that’s why I also like being in Spain – you can be either in the mountains or on the beach in less than two hours either way.
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