Legal & General has bumped up the price of its property fund saying saying conditions have stabilised July 18, 2016 Legal & General has increased the price of its property fund, saying conditions have stabilised since the week in which several similar funds suspended trading. The firm has reduced the fair value adjustment on its property fund from minus 15 per cent to minus 10 per cent, which led to the fund price going up by 4.3 per [...]
This pensions giant has just warned downsizing your home to fund your retirement is a terrible idea July 18, 2016 Planning on downsizing and relying on what's left over to fund your retirement? Don't bother, Royal London has warned. Get a pension instead. According to the pensions and investment giant, roughly three million people of working age are planning to use the value of their home to fund their retirement. But a new report by the [...]
British Land says investors will be cautious after the Brexit vote July 18, 2016 FTSE 100-listed commercial property giant British Land said this morning it expects investors and occupiers to take a cautious approach to property in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. The figures Since the EU referendum vote, British Land has secured the sale of Debenhams' Oxford Street store for £400m and the company has made 17 long-term retail leases totaling 58,000 sq ft, for [...]
One-quarter of office space in the City and Canary Wharf could become vacant if UK leaves Single Market July 17, 2016 Swathes of offices across London could be deserted over the next few years if the UK does not secure access to the Single Market after it leaves the European Union, according to new research. DealX, an analytics company, estimated 26m square feet of commercial real estate, equivalent to nine per cent of all office space [...]
In numbers: House of Lords housing report explained July 15, 2016 The demand for housing in Britain has a become a hot topic over the past few decades, largely because of its inevitable growing population, rising immigration and rising incomes. This morning a report by the House of Lords suggested the government's target to build a million homes by 2020 is woefully inadequate. But what do the rest [...]
Irvine Sellar’s £1bn “Shard of West London” skyscraper just lost 51 storeys – it’s now the Cube of West London July 15, 2016 Remember the so-called "Shard of West London", the £1bn, 65-storey tower in Paddington planned by Shard developer Irvine Sellar? That's just received a bit of a downgrade, after the company behind it unveiled new plans for an office block – which is 51 storeys smaller. The newly-styled, 14-storey Paddington Cube, on the site of a former Royal Mail [...]
Weak housebuilding caused the UK’s construction output to shrink for the fifth month in a row in May – and it could get worse July 15, 2016 As if they needed it, here's more bad news for housebuilders: the UK's construction output fell 2.1 per cent between April and May – driven largely by a drop in the number of new homes being built. Figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this morning showed output fell 1.9 per cent year-on-year [...]
UK should be building 300,000 homes a year to tackle housing crisis, according to House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee report July 15, 2016 Britain needs at least 300,000 new homes a year to fix its housing crisis, according to a House of Lords report published this morning. The report has called for a building boom, but courted controversy by arguing that the private sector “has neither the ability nor motivation” to satisfy demand. The cross-party Economic Affairs Committee [...]
This ex-army man’s new company is driving cowboy builders out of London with its focus on military precision July 14, 2016 We all love to moan about tradesmen – often with good reason. The famously flaky building industry means the cliches about people not turning up, or leaving a job half finished, are sadly too often still true. And consumers compound the problem by taking the lowest quote for a job. It was this apparent absence [...]
How British designers like Burberry, Paul Smith and Alexander McQueen influenced the design of stunning flats at One Tower Bridge July 14, 2016 July sunshine and the smell of newly mown grass hit me as I stepped out of the latest show apartment at One Tower Bridge on Monday morning. How evocative of a British summer at its best. Built by Squire and Partners for Berkeley Homes, it is this, the development’s iconic location on the south bank [...]