From forlorn flats to towering success January 30, 2014 One Commercial Street is the residential project proving London’s back in business OF ALL the new towers cropping up around the UK, an ambitious development, abandoned during the financial crash, is proving that London can bounce back from a crisis. Developer Redrow London now has high hopes for its flagship project, One Commercial Street, in [...]
We can solve Britain’s housing crisis. Here’s how February 27, 2014 IF WE could build and heat homes with the hot air generated by the UK’s housing crisis debate, we would solve both issues in one go. Eighteen months ago, the issue was the availability of mortgage finance. We could not build because our customers could not borrow, and that was dragging the volume of new [...]
London housing outstrips country as prices rocket January 14, 2014 LONDON house prices are rising nearly four times as fast as properties outside the south east of England, as the recent heat in the housing market concentrates on the capital. The price of London property rose by 11.6 per cent in the 12 months to November 2013, while prices outside London and the south east [...]
Spell of hot weather jumpstarts B&Q owner’s ailing sales July 24, 2013 Kingfisher, Europe’s biggest home improvements retailer and owner of B&Q and Screwfix, has reported like-for-like sales at its UK and Ireland stores open more than a year were up 2.5 per cent in the ten weeks to 13 July, thanks to the spell of hot weather (release). Total group like-for-like sales were also up 2.5 [...]
What the other papers say this morning – 23 January 2014 January 22, 2014 FINANCIAL TIMES Microsoft to shield users’ data Microsoft will allow foreign customers to have their personal data stored on servers outside the US, breaking ranks with other big technology groups that until now have shown a united front in response to the American surveillance scandal. Just Eat gears up for £900m IPO London’s start-up cluster [...]
London homes still horribly expensive for first time buyers July 15, 2012 FIRST, the good news: the housing market is becoming less unaffordable for young people across the UK. The average price paid by a first-time buyer in June was affordable for someone on average earnings in 54 per cent of all UK local authority districts, the highest proportion for 10 years, according to the Halifax. At [...]
How to best invest for your child’s future July 23, 2013 Make sure you maximise tax-free saving for your newest addition THE Royal parents may have few financial woes, but the cost of raising a child for most extends far beyond nappies or baby food. The current average cost of a wedding is £18,244, the average first-time buyer deposit is £26,956, and student debt for 2013 [...]
Inside Track: Jenkins should settle Barclays’ £50m fine so he can move on February 12, 2014 RAISE £6bn from investors and hand more than half of it back to employees and investors six months later: as a formula for managing a corporate balance sheet, there’s a certain novelty in Barclays’ approach. But for someone who has choreographed efforts to rehabilitate a company’s image as carefully as Antony Jenkins, this has been [...]
Blockbusted 2: Rental chain back in administration October 29, 2013 BLOCKBUSTER is to enter into administration for a second time, less than seven months after teetering on the brink of collapse. Gordon Brothers, the private-equity group that bought the DVD rental chain in March, said a turnaround plan had failed and that it had filed an intention to appoint administrators, believed to be Moorfields Corporate [...]
Help to Buy is worrying but the real problem is inflexible housing policy July 31, 2013 MILTON Friedman once observed that, “with some notable exceptions, businessmen favour free enterprise in general, but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.” With this in mind, if a market intervention is criticised even within the industries that could benefit from it, it is probably safe to conclude that it is a really [...]