‘I TURNED A £93K CANCER PAYOUT INTO A £1.3M PROPERTY PORTFOLIO – IT’S SECURED MY FAMILY’S FUTURE’
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When Kelly Percival was diagnosed with breast cancer, her thoughts immediately went to her two young daughters and the legacy she would leave them if she didn’t survive.
A critical illness policy worth £93,000 paid out to Percival, 53, following her diagnosis. So she ploughed this money into property to secure a safety net for her family.
“I’d just turned 40 when I got breast cancer and I’d just split up with my partner,” she says. “I had two young children at the time and I thought, if something happens to me I need to leave something behind for them.”
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Three months after being told she had cancer in September 2013, Percival had bought her first property: an old-fashioned two-bedroom terraced house in her hometown of Shaw, Oldham, in need of complete modernisation.
Percival paid £54,000 to buy the property outright and spent a further £20,000 gutting and renovating it to a modern standard with her dad.
“Everybody has their own cancer journey but for me, dying wasn’t an option with two young girls, Charlotte and Bella, to look after,” says Percival. “So instead of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, I thought: ‘I’ll go and do something that might make a difference to them if anything happens’.”
Welcome distraction
Getting stuck into her first renovation project was the distraction Percival needed from the treatment, which went on until April 2014.
The property hadn’t been modernised since the 1930s. The original flagstone floor was still in place, the property lacked any heating and it needed rewiring. It gave her valuable time working with her dad, who’d been in the building trade.
After six months of renovation work, the property was revalued at around £100,000 which meant she could remortgage it to release £70,000 back out to buy another house.
Percival moved away from Shaw, ending up in Timperley, Altrincham, but her parents still lived in the house she grew up in.
With house prices half that of those in Timperley, all but one of her seven properties are now in Shaw. Over the next four years, she continued to build her portfolio and today it’s worth £1.3m.
“Although I started property investing for my daughters, after buying one I got the bug,” says Percival, who renovated her first property in between her chemotherapy and radiotherapy sessions.
Once she was free of cancer and in recovery, she realised how much she loved the whole process of finding a property, negotiating over the price, fixing it up and working on the interior design.
More than 10 years later, she lets out seven houses to families and professionals, four of which are jointly owned with her husband Rich, 52. One of her homes has been occupied by the same tenants for 12 years.
Missed opportunities to invest
She now regrets not buying more back in 2014/15 when house prices were much lower. “You used to be able to pick up properties there for under £100,000, but that’s not possible any more; prices are more like £150,000.
“I had the money and I didn’t invest – and looking back I should have done, because those opportunities go quite quickly.”
Typical yields for the area are 6pc and over, according to letting agents Gascoigne Halman. Returns are strong due to high demand for the area, says lettings director Rebecca Whitehead.
All told, Percival’s seven properties – including the ones owned with her husband which rent out for between £900 to £1,100 – generate gross rent of just over £85,000 a year. She now lives more than 50 miles from most of her properties, and she has always used managing agents.
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A lifetime of skills come together
For two decades up until the pandemic, Percival worked full-time in the nuclear industry as a project procurement manager.
But around four years ago when the project ended, she decided it was time for a complete change. She retrained as an interior designer, handed in her notice and set up Kelly Percival Design just before turning 50.
The combination of skills she’s built up over the last three decades; her architectural studies, learning on the job from her dad’s building knowledge, 20 years as a buyer in the nuclear sector negotiating deals and sourcing materials, have all played in a part in making her a successful property investor, she says.
Although Percival is an experienced renovator now, over the years she has learned some hard lessons.
“The very first property I bought to renovate had an old cast iron bath in it,” she says. “Me and my dad thought it would be a nightmare to get it out so we left it there.
“In hindsight we shouldn’t have done that. When the taps broke it was difficult to get to them and the plumbers struggled to replace them so we ended up getting rid of it anyway.
“It’s much easier to start from scratch with everything brand new and it’s better for the tenant because they don’t have to complain about things breaking.”
To avoid becoming over-exposed to any house price bumps in Shaw, Percival has decided to look for her next property outside of the area and is midway through freeing up some equity from one of her homes.
Towns such as Swinton and Urmston, along the corridor between Shaw and Altrincham, are two of the locations she has her eye on.
Although Percival says she’s always on the lookout for new investment opportunities, she has fulfilled her wish to be able to pass on a legacy to her now adult daughters and her two stepchildren. “We’ve managed to build up the portfolio enough so they get one house each at least,” she says. “It’s nice to be able to leave something behind for them.”
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2025-11-13T14:00:43Z
