Pucker up Pickles
Eric Pickles revealed himself to be an unlikely romantic this week, just in time for St Valentine’s Day. Speaking at a Sitematch event – where the public and private sector meet to discuss possible developments for brownfield sites – in the Aqua Shard, the secretary of state tugged at attendees’ heart strings: “Events like this are a way of creating a bit of love between local authorities and developers,” he cooed. “The public sector needs to be less stuffy and find its inner romantic.” Stop it, Pickles, you’re making us blush.
Twitter update is pants
Some might say it was a case of too much information last week when Exemplar’s Daniel Van Gelder gave the whole of the Twittersphere an update on his morning attire. With his Westminster Property Association hat on, Van Gelder did a telephone interview with BBC London radio to discuss the implications of the new vacant building credit planning guidelines (see feature, p54). He tweeted that he did the interview on the telephone “from home in boxers and T-shirt”. Talk about taking a relaxed attitude towards the media.
A torrent of liquid assets
The industrial market has been awash with money over the past 18 months, with a torrent of portfolios on the market. The deluge has given shed heads an interesting problem – with so much stock on the market they are running out of “project” names. Hence Diary’s recent discovery that SEGRO’s £153m sale to Blackstone, known as Project Lake, was so named because the preferred moniker, Project River, was already taken. With Lone Star’s Project Ocean recently traded, Lake came up trumps. We’ll call the market when we see a Project Tributary, or a Project Puddle.
Roll over, Samuel Johnson
Here’s a solution for those struggling to come up with original project code names: make up entirely new words. It certainly seems to come naturally to some. How about this for a new entrant to the alternative dictionary of completely made-up property jargon: “laminatification”. No, it is not a word. But, yes, it does now have a definition, thanks to one property linguist who is clearly happy to play fast and loose with the English language. It does not mean, as one might think, covering everything in cheap plastic. Rather it is used to describe the synchronising of financial cycles between separate business entities in order to work together on infrastructure projects. If you say so.
Fifty shades of shame
Love may conquer all, but it won’t help you sell your house. A recent survey from Move With Us has outlined the raunchiest things most likely to put off potential home buyers. The list includes extraordinary romantic décor such as intimate paintings of couples, personalised pillowcases, mirrored ceilings, revolving circular beds and, obvious though it might seem, naked pictures. Move With Us director Simon King has some useful advice for love-struck vendors: “While this is all good for a laugh, people that seriously want to sell their property should rethink these decorating choices as they really can put off buyers, or the property may sell but at a lower price than if they had made a few simple changes.”
Mears mauls but caravans keep on motoring
They might not be up there on adventurer turned TV personality Ray Mears’ list of favourite things, but caravan parks had quite a year in 2014. Despite being slagged off and consigned to the vaults of Room 101 on national TV by Mears – who was then equally unceremoniously dropped from the Caravan Show, where he was due to appear as a speaker this month – an average of one caravan park was sold every two weeks in 2014. This was an increase of 50% on 2013, according to property consultant Sanderson Weatherall, which put the dramatic rise down to GDP growth, stable and low interest rates, and falling unemployment. And any fears of Mears derailing the sector’s growth can be allayed, as Sanderson Weatherall exclusively revealed to Diary that far from seeing a slow down, it agreed a park sale just one week into January.
