A PROPERTY brand which owes its national expansion to a book about McDonald’s has celebrated its 30th anniversary.

Richard Martin opened the first Martin & Co office in Yeovil and a house for £27,000 on day one.

It is now the largest letting and property management franchise business in the UK, with almost 200 Martin & Co offices from Falmouth to Inverness.

The idea of creating a network of franchises came in 1993, when Mr Martin, now chairman, was on holiday in Portugal and reading a book about the world’s most famous franchise, McDonald’s.

He turned the business into a nationwide network, operating to common standards but run independently by local estate agents.

Martin & Co was named Franchise of the Year in 2008 and 2011 and began trading on AIM in 2013. Its first major acquisition was the Xperience property group in 2014.

It now has nearly 300 offices across five brands and is the largest multi-brand property franchise business in the UK.

Richard Martin said: “The lesson I learnt from the reading the book about McDonald’s on the beach all those years ago was the importance of brand consistency. This discipline has been at the heart of building the Martin & Co brand and has helped deliver the largest letting and property management franchise business in the UK.”

When the firm began, only 10 per cent of UK property was privately rented. The number of private rented homes has risen 135 per cent since, with a 346 per cent rise in households aged 35-44. Analysis by Martin & Co also shows 71 per cent of households aged 16-24 now rent privately , up from 32 per cent in 1986.

Two million households have entered the private rented sector in England alone in the past 10 years, with private rented homes overtaking social housing in 2012.

Ian Wilson, chief executive of Martin & Co, said: “With property outperforming gold threefold and more than doubling growth seen by shares in the FTSE100 over the past three decades, our forecast is that the private rented sector will continue to grow over the next 30 years and flourish as an asset class.

“Margaret Thatcher, whose Conservative government introduced the legislative changes that paved the way for the private rented sector to grow, had a vision for the average person to own stocks and shares. In fact, it’s the growth of property assets in the hands of private investors that is the most remarkable change in the landscape.”