Which rostrum for King Sturge’s new team ?
Auctioneers will be wondering what King Sturge is going to do with the commercial auction team it plucked from the ashes of Erinaceous last week.
The six-strong group, led by Jason Birch and Felix Rigg, did a lightning deal in just a few days after presenting King Sturge with its business plan. And what is that plan?
Not sure. But we expect the guys who used to trade under the Harman Healy brand inpre-Erinaceous days will want to deal in the much bigger lot sizes that will now come their way via the King Sturge machine.
But there is another option. The team’s new employer is into residential in a modest kind of way, and probably can’t quite see why Birch et al need to concentrate only on flogging off old offices, sheds and shops.
From the trenches: it’s worse than you think…
“It’s a bit like being in the middle of the Somme,” says one disgruntled agent on the housing market. “We’re still assessing the damage.”
Anecdotally, the news is even worse than headlines suggest. Housebuilders are quietly reporting that reservations are 60% down on last year. So bad is it that one Knightsbridge agent has not sold a single property since September.
And spare a thought for Mark Clare, Barratt’s chief executive. We reckon he has lost £225,682 of his own money on account of his company’s share slide. That’s more than the £166,000 cost of the average Barratt home.
…so take no prisoners
As conditions get tougher in the property market, it seems good old-fashioned manners are going out the window.
One industry headhunter tells us there is a distinct move away from the unwritten rule that allowed agents to take their clients with them when they jumped ship to a rival firm.
Firms in the more cut-throat worlds of banking, accountancy and law have long wielded restrictive covenants in this way, but now the same ungentlemanly attitude is increasingly prevalent among agents.
This in turn is putting firms off hiring agents from rivals, for fear they won’t be able to bring valuable business with them.
Magical Mystery Tour with a difference
A row between a Liverpool developer and a Beatles tour guide has turned nasty. The spat – splashed across the Liverpool Echo last week – began when guide Philip Coppell sent a scathing e-mail to Maghull Developments slating itsnewly approved plan to revamp part of historic Hope Street.
“It makes me wonder what you did to get planning permission,” he said. “I hope that the present credit crunch bankrupts your company.”
In an expletive-strewn response, Maghull’s managing director Michael Hanlon offered to “make room” for Coppell “in the foundations”.
He said that planning consent was the product of “two years of very high-level discussions and negotiations” with a host of officers, and a whole raft of local consultation groups, “many of which consist of time-wasting w*****s like you who seem to think they are experts in heritage and regeneration”.
The global credit crisis does not seem to worry Hanlon. “There is more chance of John Lennon giving a guest appearance next Friday night at one of your poxy tour dos than the credit crunch bankrupting our business,” he said.
A Maghull spokesperson said that Hanlon and the company were taking legal advice about Coppell’s e-mail.
More than generosity to Perloff’s waiver
Here’s one way to improve performance. Unveiling his company’s full-year results for 2007, Panther Securities’ chairman Andrew Perloff revealed that he had gallantly waived his annual salary, thus reducing the company’s overheads by more than £522,000.
However, the generous gesture was not entirely selfless. “I am continuing this waiver for the current year, as I am fed up with personally paying so much tax,” he said.
Aren’t we all.
Royally financed and fit for a prince?
An unnamed member of the royal family is reported to have held a reception on the building site that is due to become One Hyde Park, the ultra-expensive block of flats being developed by the Candy brothers for the Qatari royal family.
Who could that be?
Prince Charles? Unlikely, since he abhors modern architecture. The Duke of Gloucester? Perhaps, since he is an architect by training, and might wish to see hard evidence of budget-free design.
Our money is on Prince Andrew, an HRH who shows no interest in design (remember his country pile “South York”?), but works hard wooing Middle Eastern potentates into investing in Britain in his role as official trade ambassador.
Or maybe it was just one of the minor royals looking for a new flat.
CBRE’s bulbs save more than a planet
How many surveyors does it take to change 177,000 light bulbs? Ask CB Richard Ellis.
The 29,000-strong global agent is about to do just that. Last week, it promised to change the incandescent bulbs in more than 300 offices around the globe to those funny energy-saving jobs that flicker and take an age to come on.
Before sniggering at this seemingly token planet-saving switch, it is worth counting up the cost in electricity bill savings – about £2.35m pa, says CBRE.
