Housing market boosts Pimlico Plumbers’ sales April 28, 2014 PIMLICO Plumbers, one of the UK’s biggest independent plumbing companies, is on track to hit record sales of £20m this year after benefiting from a rebound in the housing market. Charlie Mullins, the founder and chief executive of the London-based group, said homeowners in the capital were taking on bigger “pre-recession property projects” such as [...]
London house prices are now more than double the rest of the UK April 2, 2014 LONDON’S house prices have soared to historic levels, with the gap between prices in the capital and elsewhere in the UK expanding to the widest it has ever been. Figures released by Nationwide yesterday showed that the cost of a typical London home – at £362,699 in March – was over twice as high as [...]
Letters to the Editor – 03/06 – Britain’s new MEPs, Google and Europe, Best of Twitter June 2, 2014 Britain’s new MEPs [Re: Britain’s new MEPs must do their job – whatever they think about the EU, yesterday] Mark Boleat asserts that “constituents voted [MEPs] in to engage in Europe”. How does he know what voters were thinking? It’s not true in my case, for example, because I have zero faith in any of [...]
Liberty Living joins student digs providers seeking London float June 2, 2014 PROPERTY fund manager Brandeaux announced plans yesterday to float its student accommodation arm Liberty Living as it seeks to repay discontented investors who saw their shares suspended from trading last year. Liberty is the brand of the Dublin-listed student property fund, which was forced to suspend its shares last summer after it was overwhelmed with [...]
Just three reforms would transform UK recovery into long-term boom April 22, 2014 WHISPER it, but things finally seem to be looking up. Investment is rising, unemployment is falling, and the deficit seems to be coming under control. But it could be a lot better. Real wages will not recover to their pre-crisis peak until 2020. And expected growth of 2.7 per cent this year is well below [...]
Just three reforms would transform UK recovery into long-term boom April 22, 2014 WHISPER it, but things finally seem to be looking up. Investment is rising, unemployment is falling, and the deficit seems to be coming under control. But it could be a lot better. Real wages will not recover to their pre-crisis peak until 2020. And expected growth of 2.7 per cent this year is well below [...]
What you need to know before the open April 16, 2014 European bourses are expected to open higher today. After a very choppy day yesterday, US markets closed up, despite Russian claims that Ukraine’s “close to civil war”. Weak GDP data from China – growth slowed to 7.4 per cent in the first quarter – could add jitters to markets, though, but there's also UK unemployment [...]
What you need to know before the open May 27, 2014 After a day out of the loop yesterday, the FTSE will be playing catch up with European markets, which saw a strong session yesterday. The European and Ukraine elections don’t appear to have affected equities too much. Several bourses saw encouraging gains, with the Dax posting a record high. Eyes are still on European Central [...]
The business builder June 2, 2014 Harriet Green talks vans, contractors and disastrous renovations with aspect.co.uk co-founder Will Davies WITH the supply crunch starting to bite in the London office space sector, according to CBRE, and with average London house prices now at £485,000, the old adage that 1 per cent of a property’s value should be spent on upkeep annually [...]
Barratt and Derwent benefit from recovery May 8, 2014 BARRATT Developments expects to secure reservations on more than a quarter of next year’s private completions by June as the UK’s housing recovery continues apace. Chief executive Mark Clare said yesterday that rising consumer confidence and better mortgage availability meant sales rates had now reached an “optimum level”, with Barratt registering an average of 0.77 [...]