Commercial property blog

By James Whitmore

While reading Jeremy Clarkson’s ‘Born to be Riled’ last night, I was amused to read the following:

Jeremy Clarkson - we've been here before

‘As the 1980s drew to a close, Britain was gripped by a recession which would see car sales fall from 2.2 million a year to just over 1.5 million. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs. Factories closed. House prices plummeted. So did hemlines. It was all horrid. Throughout those dark and gloomy days, gurus told us that the glorious times of easy credit and avarice were over and that in the 1990s we would all be busy gathering wood for pensioners and helping to set up community service projects.

‘But, thankfully, the British recession has ended and those old values are back on line. Girls who had been forced into long and tedious skirts now insist on huge slits up to their ladies’ areas, estate agents are selling houses in Chelsea for £25m, the stock market is up above the ionosphere. Greed is good. And greed is back. Phew.’

Sound familiar? Substitute ‘1980s’ for 2008 and ‘1990s’ for 2010s and Clarkson could be writing about today’s dismal market conditions.

Recessions follow a similar pattern, it is how we get into them that differs each time. In the 1990s an economic recession led to the property collapse. This time a banking crisis has created a property collapse, which might lead to a recession.

It is important not to get too depressed. When markets are booming, it is difficult to think of them crashing, and, when they are bad, the good times seem a distant memory. But all recessions come to an end sometime.

Robert Houston, the new global boss of ING Real Estate Investment Management, likens our situation to being in an aeroplane that is going through the clouds. At some stage it will re-emerge into blue sky. The uncertainty for us, the passengers, is knowing quite when.

Lehman Brothers property analyst Mike Prew this week called the bottom of the property share market, which anticipates a bottoming-out in the direct market in the middle of next year. He suggests the point of maximum pessimism has now passed.

Bearing in mind that his own employer’s financial position is looking rather shaky, I’m not so sure.

But, hang in there. Greed will be back – sometime.

By Iain O'Neil

Listen , I’m not a huge fan of American foreign policy and i do sympathise with the stereotypical view of most Americans as being a little like Middle Age astronomers who thought the spot they were standing on was in fact the centre of the universe – with everything, and everyone revolving around them.

However, i have to say that when it comes to shear watchability you can’t beat Americans. They were made for TV and TV was made for them.

Just when i thought i’d had my fill of caucuses, primaries, presidential nominees and the whole US election… along comes the self-styled Pitbull with Lipstick!!

Sarah Palin - Republican Vice Presidential candidate and John McCain’s running mate – is an internet sensation.

Clips of her are all over blog sites and video aggregators.

She is also the only way the Republicans were ever going to get news coverage in this country which would compete with the reams of press given to their rival Barrack Obama.

Let me round it up for you as much as i have a handle on it so far:

1. She is known by her friends as Sarah Barracuda
2. She fiercely contested reports she had extra-marital relations with a colleague
3. She was forced to put to bed rumours that her baby son, was in fact her grandson.
4. She did so by giving the press her 17-year-old pregnant daughter (who couldn’t be the mother of the baby because she was carrying a child of her own)
5. The 17-year-old daughter’s boyfriend lists himself on MySpace as “a f**@ing redneck” who likes to ”shoot some sh*t” and “doesn’t want kids” – nice bloke i hear you say.

So far the only thing missing is some kind of conspiracy/government control angle

Oh, oh… wait a minute.

Here’s the Redneck, don’t want kids, gun lover up on stage with Pailn’s daughter at a Republican convention and he’s holding her hand and obviously completely happy about it all – and his MySpace site has disappeared!

Awesome.

By Christine Eade

Sometimes, property life collides with real life, and I find myself talking like a property person to an audience that is either hostile or indifferent.

I was reminded of this last week on reading the obituary of Professor John Barron, Master of St Peter’s College Oxford, until he retired in 2003.

While extolling the life of this great Hellenist, the Daily Telegraph wrote: ‘His other great passion was building. Three new buildings were added to the college on his watch; one of the disappointments of his time at Oxford was that his desire to acquire the land around Oxford Prison for St Peter’s never came off. As ever, he bore the outcome with equanimity.’

‘Equanimity’ is not the word I would have used.
I used to go to social events at St Peter’s while my son was an undergraduate there. The portly master would bellow: ‘Who is this terrible fellow Trevor Osborne? I’m told he’s gone bust before.’

Masters of Oxford colleges boom rhetorical questions, and do not expect answers.
The reason for Barron’s anger was that the Trevor Osborne Property Group had outbid St Peter’s in buying the prison.

Barron wanted the prison as overflow space for his college; Osborne succeeded in converting the prison into a Malmaison Hotel.

I tried to engage Barron in conversation, telling him that Trevor Osborne had a reputation in conservation, and had turned Wimbledon Town Hall into a shopping centre before his former company, Speyhawk, went into receivership in 1993.

But the Master would not enter into an argument and was never curious as to why the mere mother of an undergraduate knew so much about his adversary.

He continued on all social occasions to hope for the worst to happen to the Trevor Osborne Property Group.

When it was time to return to Oxford for the age-old Latin graduation ceremony at the Sheldonian, I stayed in one-and-a-half former prison cells at Malmaison.
Last Christmas, Osborne hosted a dinner at Oxford Castle, next to the former prison, to celebrate winning 12 awards for the prison conversion.

I hope Barron went to his grave reconciled to the fact that his adversary had done a good job.