AN ENTREPRENEUR from Wickham has secured a business partnership with the founder of one the country’s leading budget airlines.

David Brierley, alongside wife MaryAnne, completed a deal with Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, who set up easyJet in 1995 before branching out into other travel/leisure-related businesses.

The couple have joined forces with the billionaire boss to launch easyProperty, with ambitions to make waves in the UK estate agency market.

Mr Brierley said he is looking forward to the venture as well as joining the ‘easy’ family of brands.

“It’s a really interesting time in the estate agency world and we couldn’t be working with a better brand,” said Mr Brierley, who has been in the property business since studying estate management at Southampton University in his early twenties.

Since the late 1970s, he has been involved in a succession of successful real estate companies that he has helped build up and then sold on to bigger organisations.

Mr Brierley established his company Evolve in 2007 in an attempt to simplify the estate agency business, taking on all the administrative parts of the operation for estate agents.

Explaining the deal with Sir Stelios, he said: “Evolve acquired the assets of the easyProperty business and then Mary Anne and I bought the trading name and licence from Stelios.”

The Tosca Venture Capital Fund, which is the major shareholder in Fine and Country and The Guild, have a ten per cent stake in Evolve, while the Brierleys and Sir Stelios hold the remainder of the shares in the company.

Mr Brierley added: “The idea is to concentrate on local areas and grow organically turning region by region by region in the residential sales arena the colour orange.

“We aim to have 72 local partners in place within the first 12 months.

“They will have two or three territories each with individual territories comprising around 25,000 owner-occupiers.”