Good morning.
Meet the new boss…. Cushman & Wakefield has announced that global president John Forrester will take over from Brett White as CEO.
The announcement comes as Cushman reports rising revenues of £2.2bn for the last quarter, with profits up 85% to £220m.
Meanwhile, shares in Savills soared by 7.8% yesterday, after it announced a post-pandemic bounceback.
But there is less cheer for retail landlord Hammerson. Rita-Rose Gagné’s first results showed continuing losses of £354m and a further slump in value by 6.4%. But she has big plans to turn things around. The question is, will it be enough?
Gagné, meanwhile, has said the firm’s fortunes would have been far better, if it hadn’t been for government’s eviction ban(£). “It is inexplicable to me that it would go on so long,” she said.
The Times (£) and The Guardian take a closer look at Michael Murry, the property dealer who is about to take over from his future father-in-law at Frasers Group.
And the Bank of England(£) has said that interest rates will remain at historic lows, as long as 4% inflation is only a blip.
Regal London has submitted new plans for 759 homes in a £270m development at Euro House in Wembley, just months after buying the site.
But people in some of the poorest parts of the UK are paying far more council tax(£) as a proportion of their property’s value than the very wealthiest. In parts of Lancashire it amounts to 2% each year, while in Westminster it is just 0.1%.
City folk, meanwhile, do like to be beside the seaside. Yes, they do like to buy beside the sea(£), as Rightmove records a doubling of urbanites cruising to the coast to walk along the prom, prom, prom.
The trend has infuriated the locals, with the council leader and MP of Devon’s south coast taking to pages of The Times (£) to thunder about second homes.
But the problem is far more widespread, says The FT (£). The UK’s property boom and falling mortgage rates has only priced first-time buyers further out of the market.
And here is a tip if you want to win big in Vegas. Become a landlord(£).
And finally, it is understandable that so many city folk are looking to escape to the seaside. The experience of the lockdowns, stuck in the cramped confines of a dormant metropolis, caused many to dream of the wide-open spaces, endless horizons and freedoms of the coast. And as restrictions eased, the urban population descended en masse to any bit of beach within a day’s drive, so much so that an app was launched to show which bits of beach had any space left. Now, with remote working becoming the new norm, many are seeing if they can make the change permanent(£). No wonder, then, that city folk flocking to the sea isn’t the only marked increase picked up by Rightmove. It has also recorded a 36% rise in enquiries from those who live by the sea. Apparently they want to escape the crowds of city folk by moving to the city.
