Our Team and a Little History

The Founders

Maintaining a watchful eye and fully committed to ensuring standards never slip. Sandra and Geoff founded the business in 1978 after moving to Lancaster with their young family. They began by letting out the upper floors of their large (and otherwise unaffordable) townhouse at the end of the Monkey Rack (Belle Vue Terrace).

The top floor was first rented to a professional couple, and by 1978 the middle floor was let to a group of students on a board and lodging basis. Over the following decades, Sandra and Geoff gradually acquired a few more properties, allowing their growing family to expand into the remaining floors of the original house.

As one of the first student housing providers in Lancaster, Sandra and Geoff kept pace with changing student expectations, continually adapting their properties to meet evolving needs. That tradition continues to this day.

The Next Generation

Eternally grateful to the original top-floor tenants, one of whom, a nurse, quite literally saved her life during the summer heatwave of 1976, Natalya and her husband Dan bought their first student house at 37 Kirkes Road immediately after graduating from Bristol University in 1999, where they both studied Engineering.

An elderly gentleman, having seen Sandra and Geoff renovating another property (No. 21), approached them to ask whether they’d be interested in purchasing his house, as his previous sale had fallen through. Natalya and Dan took up the mantle, though Sandra and Geoff did most of the hard renovation work, since the young couple were travelling around India at the time, before taking up graduate jobs elsewhere. Since then, the portfolio has grown to ten houses, and Natalya and Dan continue to improve each one.

They returned to the area in 2005 to raise their own family. Having experienced a wide range of rental housing themselves, as undergraduates in Bristol and later as young professionals in London, they understand first-hand the balance between study and student life, and use that perspective to continually improve the comfort and practicality of their properties.

The Third Generation

In 2022, Freya and her husband George, a highly skilled engineer, joined the business when Freya took over the running of 20 Brunton Road. A former student herself, Freya graduated from the University of Cumbria in 2016 with a degree in Conservation Science.

Freya now looks after 20 Brunton Road day to day, with George, bringing fresh energy and a younger perspective to the Lancaster Housing story.