Crain's Manchester Business

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Crain's 40 under 40

Julie Twist, 38

Managing director

Julie M Twist Properties Ltd.

Greatest professional achievement: Playing a part in Manchester becoming a 24-hour city and helping it grow.

Current business goal: To prove that the property market isn’t as bad as it is made out to be.

Twist was the first residential estate agent to open in Manchester city centre. It was February 1994 and she was 23 years old.

Two years later the IRA bomb went off and it was another year after that before another agent took the plunge and opened up.

A far cry from today when agents’ offices almost line whole streets. “After the bomb, we had a challenging time trying to convince people the city was a safe place to live,” she said. “But with a lot of hard work and love, the city is a great place to live and we have grown over the last 15 years as, I would argue, its most established agent.”

Twist claims to have assisted in more than half of the regeneration work that has gone on in the city, and has watched it become an investment hotspot, despite the recent decline in values. “Seeing people realising the value of investing in the city over the last five years has been extremely rewarding.”

Recently, Twist’s business expanded its services to include house maintenance, furniture packages, mortgages and cleaning, in addition to sales and rentals.

In 2002, she was the first to open on Salford Quays, with Jones Homes, creating JJT Residential Services.