A landlord who also founded one of the UK’s largest estate agencies has been named by Kemi Badenoch as shadow housing secretary.

Kevin Hollinrake, who is MP for Thirsk and Malton and was a junior business minister during the 2022 Sunak Tory Government, later becoming the department’s secretary of state but has now been named by the party’s new leader as its shadow levelling up, housing and communities secretary.

He is also a landlord with a clutch of rental properties in York and has been included in the shadow cabinet after making initiat overtures to run for Tory leader back in July this year. All of the other candidates, bar James Cleverly who ruled himself out, have been given jobs within Badenoch’s shadow cabinet.

Hollinrake is best known within the property industry as the founder of Hunters estate agency, which he established with John Waterhouse with an initial branch in York during 1992 but then expanding to a national chain during the noughties.

The company, which now has 182 branches, was sold to The Property Franchise Group, for £24m in January 2019 netting its directors, who included Hollinrake, £9.5 million between them.

Politics

Although Hollinrake used to be involved with the business from time to time as its chairman, his main focus in recent years has been politics after he was election as the Conservative MP for Malton and Thirsk in 2015.

Hollinrake represents the constituency where he was born and brought up and still lives there with his wife and four children.

He started his career after studying physics at Sheffield Hallam University, joining the Prudential as a branch manager which, at the time, was the largest estate agency in Britain.

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