Sarah Beeny

Sarah Lucinda Beeny (born 9 January 1972) is an English broadcaster and entrepreneur.She is best known for presenting UK property shows such as Property Ladder, Property Snakes and Ladders, Streets Ahead, Britain's Best Homes, Help! My House is Falling Down, Beeny's Restoration Nightmare, Double Your House for Half the Money, Sarah Beeny's Selling Houses, How to Live Mortgage Free, Renovate Don't Relocate and Sarah Beeny's New Life in the Country.

Beeny is a high-profile campaigner for buildings at risk and has personally renovated Rise Hall, a 32-bedroomed Grade II* listed hall in the East Riding of Yorkshire. She also is a keen supporter of Brain Tumour Research, Cardboard Citizens and various cancer charities.

Beeny, who started Property Development and Investment businesses at the age of 19 with her brother, and then-boyfriend and now-husband, was also founder of the online businesses MySingleFriend.com and Tepilo.

Beeny has written regular columns for national newspapers and magazines, in addition to numerous books.

Beeny launched her podcast Round the Houses with Sarah Beeny in 2018, featuring a host of rich and famous guests who allow Sarah into their homes and their lives. Series one includes Joe Sugg, Julian Clary, June Sarpong, Jo Wood, Lynn Bowles, Pearl Lowe and Tim Lovejoy.

Beeny was born in Reading, Berkshire, to Richard and Ann. Beeny has an elder brother, Diccon. The daughter of an architect for Bovis Homes, her mother loved the self-sustained outdoor life. The family lived in two converted brick cottages in a nine-acre plot on the edge of the Duke of Wellington's estate at Stratfield Saye in Hampshire, in a style that Beeny describes as "a bit like The Good Life." The family kept goats, chickens and ducks, while her father made dolls-house furniture to raise extra cash. Beeny has described her family in this period as "...crafty-entrepreneurial but more craft than entrepreneurial."

After her mother died aged 39 of breast cancer when Beeny was 10, she was educated as a weekly boarder at the all-girls Luckley-Oakfield School in Wokingham. Although her friends went to university, Beeny did not; she was encouraged to study drama by her English teacher and took a leading role in Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle. Pursuing the idea of becoming a professional actress, she studied drama at Queen Mary's College, Basingstoke, but failed to get into a drama school.

Beeny travelled around the world solo at the age of 17 and felt "lonely and seasick" most of the way round. She returned to the UK to take a series of jobs, including: working for Save the Children; window-cleaning; door-to-door vacuum cleaner-selling and running her own sandwich-making business. Assuming she would be self-employed for the rest of her life, at weekends she would study the property market, which gave her a good grounding in the market. Having saved up a deposit, without any formal training, Beeny began her own property-developing business with her brother and her husband. Beeny is also the co-founder of the UK dating website MySingleFriend.com.

Career

After meeting the sister-in-law of Sarah Delafield-Cook, a talent hunter at Talkback Thames, at a hen party, Beeny was asked to undertake a screen test to front a new programme series about property development, which was to be fronted by a property expert. Taking the advice of her stepmother, the successful format Property Ladder has led to various spin-off series, including Streets Ahead, Britain's Best Homes and Property Snakes and Ladders.

In 2006, Sarah presented another Channel 4 programme, One Year to Pay Off Your Mortgage. She has written a number of books to accompany the series, as well as a weekly column for the Mail on Sunday.

In August 2007, Sarah starred in a promotional trailer for Channel 4 which was made in the form of a parody of a Kung Fu movie. The classic line "You dare to challenge the might of the Beeny", was said by Beeny to the evil nemesis. Later that year, she also appeared on the Channel 5 motoring show Fifth Gear, where she raced Jason Plato in an articulated lorry around a course. Beeny has appeared on Gordon Ramsay's The F-Word, where she offered up her garden for Gordon's sheep to feed on.

Beeny regularly appears on television and is a friend of DJ Christian O' Connell. She has also appeared on Bob the Builder alongside Dermot O'Leary, on which she estimated the value of Bob the Builder's house to be "Two Bob". Since August 2010, she has fronted the Channel 4 programme Help! My House is Falling Down, which had the working title of House Rescue before its commission.

In November 2010, she presented Beeny's Restoration Nightmare on Channel 4, showing her renovation of Rise Hall, a Grade II* listed historic house near Rise, East Riding of Yorkshire, to create a wedding venue..Beeny Sold Rise Hall in 2019.

In August 2011, Beeny began presenting a new series for BBC One titled Village SOS. In this series, the programme follows a group of passionate villagers who want to restore their village to its former glory.

In 2012, Sarah presented Double your House for Half the Money, a series that showed viewers how they can have the home they've always dreamed about, even if you can't afford to buy it.This series ran for 3 seasons.

In 2014, she meets homeowners ditching traditional estate agents as they try to sell their homes online in Sarah Beeny's How to Sell Your Home.

How to Live Mortgage Free with Sarah Beeny in 2017 saw Sarah sharing tricks to avoid mortgage payments altogether.

In 2018, Beeny launched her podcast At Home with Sarah Beeny, a series where rich, famous and fabulous personalities give Sarah Beeny unprecedented access to the inside of their homes, and their lives. The series includes guests Joe Sugg, Julian Clary, Jo Wood, June Sarpong, Tim Lovejoy, Lynn Bowles and Pearl Lowe.

In June 2022, Beeny's latest television series Sarah Beeny's Little House Big Plans premiered on Channel 4.

Beeny met her husband and business partner, Graham Swift, when she was 18 years old. Her brother is married to Swift's sister, Caroline. Beeny and Swift have four sons. They previously lived in Streatham. In 2001, the couple bought Rise Hall, in the East Riding of Yorkshire for £435,000 for the property, and began restoration work on it.; Beeny and Swift sold Rise Hall for £1.4 million in 2019. After selling Rise Hall, Beeny and Swift left London and moved to the Somerset countryside.

In August 2014, Beeny was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue – which it did.

In August 2022, Beeney revealed that she would be receiving radiotherapy and chemotherapy for breast cancer; Beeny lost her mother Ann to the same disease at the age of 39 when she was just 10-years-old.

• Property Ladder: How to Make Pounds from Property (Cassell Illustrated, 1 November 2002) ISBN 978-1844030224
• Property Ladder: Profit from Property (Cassell Illustrated, 15 November 2003) ISBN 978-1844031917
• Property Ladder: The Developer's Bible (Cassell Illustrated, 31 October 2004) ISBN 978-1844032792
• Sarah Beeny's Price the Job (Collins & Brown, 14 April 2006) ISBN 978-1843403609
• Property Ladder: Hints and Tips (Cassell Illustrated, 14 September 2006) ISBN 978-1844035182
• A Date with Sarah Beeny: Mysinglefriend.com's Guide to Dating and Dumping, Flirting and Flings (Harper, 1 May 2007) ISBN 978-0007250424
• Property Ladder: Sarah Beeny's Design for Profit(Cassell Illustrated, 1 June 2009) ISBN 978-1844036455
• Sarah Beeny's Green Your Home (Collins & Brown, 1 June 2009) ISBN 978-1843404927
• Sarah Beeny's 100 DIY Jobs: The Essentials Made Simple (Quadrille Publishing, 10 April 2014) ISBN 978-1857023350
• DIY Home Repairs: 100 Fix-It-Yourself Projects (Adams Media Corporation, 2 January 2015) ISBN 978-1440585296