EDITOR’S COMMENT This week the team at Savills kindly invited me to a fundraising gala for the Big House theatre company. If you haven’t seen a Big House production, you should. The charity works with young people leaving care and at risk of social exclusion, and turns them into, and I say this without fear of hyperbole, stars of the stage. Celebrating their work was well worth a trek to Dalston, not least for my LandAid Steptober count.
The actor Stephen Graham was there. In fact, the dinner was held in Jones & Sons, the restaurant at which Graham’s Boiling Point was filmed. If you haven’t seen Boiling Point, you should. The 90-minute movie was filmed in one take, and watching it feels like an anxiety attack. Graham plays a head chef whose professional and personal life is unravelling. Over the hour and a half we see an individual who should be a confident leader making disastrous decision after disastrous decision until one such incident leads to a near-tragic outcome for everyone involved. But instead of accepting responsibility immediately, they look for a scapegoat and hope they can muddle through, regardless of who gets thrown under the proverbial bus.
Anyway, on a complete change of subject, I don’t know if you have been keeping up with what has been happening in politics, but it has been quite a ride. Is Jeremy Hunt as chancellor enough to calm markets and get the economy heading back towards some semblance of normality? I know better than to try to write anything on Wednesday afternoon regarding our government that will still feel fresh when the magazine hits desks days later, so let’s just go for the lamest of hedged bets and say the jury is out.
That’s not what agencies or investors want to hear. Deal activity has not completely dried up, of course, but news like British Land looking to offload a chunk of its London office portfolio seems an exception rather than the rule, as advisers bemoan a market that is slowing rapidly in the face of global economic problems and the national shitshow of our government (those are the words of one agency boss, not my own. But for full disclosure, I agree entirely.).
So how bad is the final quarter going to get? I will get accused of talking down the market if I sound too downbeat, but it doesn’t feel great out there. One agency head sees more and more deals getting dragged out, maybe even into next year now. An agent grumbles into his beer that GPE “ruined the narrative” with its recent Finsbury Square sale, because now every other would-be seller is asking their own agents why they can’t manage to seal a deal like that.
Some will find it an opportune time, to be sure. Private buyer? Got the cash? Then distressed sellers almost certainly have something right up your – or rather their – street.
And there are institutions still eager to put money to work. As Aviva Investors’ managing director for real estate, Ben Sanderson, tells me in this week’s EG Interview: “The first opportunity and the key requirement is to have liquidity at this point in the market… There are great opportunities for equity investors who can move quickly, like we’re going to do.”
Elsewhere in the office market, lettings seem to be holding up. Blackstone’s new London HQ was a massive vote of confidence in the city. Lazard’s new home is a big change for the firm as it prepares to depart Stratton Street. If Clifford Chance does indeed ditch Canary Wharf to become GPE’s latest big-name tenant, then sure it’s a downsize, but also further proof that a top-notch new development will always find an occupier. Ongoing questions about the attraction of Canary Wharf we’ll save for another day.
By the way, the Big House’s next show, Cashmoney Now, runs from 16 November until 10 December. It’s “a breakneck tale of con artists, hackers, sugar daddies and crypto-bros where nothing is quite as it seems”. I’d recommend booking a ticket. After the events of the past few weeks, it sounds like quite a relaxing watch.
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