Property firm plans a £200m London venture May 30, 2012 LONDON & STAMFORD, the property firm run by real estate veterans Patrick Vaughan and Raymond Mould, is to set up a £200m venture with two sovereign fund partners to buy homes in central London. The company will own 40 per cent of the venture, while Middle Eastern partner Green Park Investments and a second unidentified [...]
Super prime property set to hit records November 15, 2011 LONDON’S super prime residential developments are expected to achieve record values of £10,000 per square foot as the capital continues to attract wealthy international investors, research from Knight Frank shows. Demand for luxury apartments and houses in London’s golden postcodes like Mayfair and Knightsbridge boomed earlier this century, with market values escalating from £1,000 per [...]
PROPERTY NEWS March 29, 2012 Savills selling historic Provencal mas Savills is selling Mas de l’Hospitalet, a historic Provencal mas where Oscar winning actor, Jean Dujardin held his wedding ceremony in 2009. The property dates back to the 12th century and was built by Templar Knights on the order of the King of France. Currently, the property is a boutique [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS December 5, 2011 Hastings Direct Liz Latter has been appointed as head of insurer development at the firm. She will work with Adrian Parry, head of Hastings’ panel development activities for the last two years, who will step back from his full-time commitments in early 2012 to pursue other commitments, but will continue to support the business. Latter [...]
Not for flower girls these days: Covent Garden’s luxury new flats March 29, 2012 Less than a mile up the road in Mayfair, property sells for at least £2,000 per square foot. Covent Garden, arguably a more vibrant area of central London, is still roughly half as expensive – homes can be had at prices from £1,000 per square foot. Perhaps not for long, though: one of the reasons [...]
LONDONERS HEAD FOR THE COUNTRYSIDE March 28, 2012 PROPERTY agent Savills said it was beginning to see “the first green shoots of recovery” in some of the prime residential markets outside of London, driven by an increase in affluent buyers making a move from the capital to the home counties. Savills said commuter hotspots showed particularly strong quarterly growth of over five per [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING May 13, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES Canary Wharf claims high ground on City Canary Wharf will finally come of age over the next two months when the UK’s “new” financial centre overtakes the traditional City of London as the biggest employer of bankers in Europe. According to Financial Times research, the transfer of 8,000 jobs by US bank JPMorgan [...]
Grainger rises on refinancing October 5, 2011 Shares in residential property firm Grainger gained more than 11 per cent to close at 86p yesterday, after it said it has agreed two new debt facilities. Five major banks will provide £840m, with another £50m raised with Partnership Assurance. The refinancing means Grainger’s average cost of debt will be 5.8 per cent with an [...]
Ireland agrees to austerity as it angles for a new bailout June 5, 2012 LAST week I travelled to Dublin to report on the Irish referendum. Irish voters in the end voted in favour of ratifying the Eurozone’s fiscal compact by a wide margin, but there was little celebration. In fact, Taoiseach Enda Kenny got straight on the phone to Angela Merkel to plead for a deal on the [...]
City jobs cull hits prime rents April 9, 2012 THE CITY jobs bloodbath has helped drag property rental prices down for the sixth month in a row, according to research out today. As banks cut headcounts and freeze pay, rents in prime London homes fell 0.1 per cent in March – and the very top of the market has been hit hardest, claims estate [...]