5 top property stories through the ages

EG looks back at the property market news archives TODAY | 31 May 2017 ELECTION FEVER We are just days away from the General Election and while the BPF is well placed and ready to work with whoever takes office on 9 June, to ensure we maintain real estate’s significant socio-economic contribution to the UK, now is an opportune moment to reflect on what the two main party manifestos mean for real estate, writes Melanie Leech, chief executive of the British Property Federation. Read the full comment… 10 years ago | 2007 PROPERTY AGENTS ANALYSED EG publishes its first comparative analysis of property agent LLPs | There are warnings of oversupply in the small to medium-sized markets in Yorkshire as investors look to off-pitch and speculative schemes to achieve good returns | After announcing that it would be hanging onto its £8.6m of property, Sainsbury’s property director, Peter Baguley, explains why… 25 years ago | 1992 £12m FOR BIRMINGHAM OFFICES Mercury Asset Management paid just over £12m for the long leasehold interest in the 72,000 sq ft Rutland House, Edmund Street in Birmingham. Tenant Edge & Ellison Calow Easton currently pays a rent of £1m pa, with its next review falling in March 1994. Chesterton acted for the vendor, a private trust, while Bernard Thorpe advised the purchaser.   50 years ago |1967 TOPIC OF THE DAY The volume of refuse collected in England and Wales in 1963 would cover the square mile of the City of London to a height equal to that of an 11-storey block of flats; this year the volume will be well on the way to the 12th storey. This tit-bit of information comes from the recently published report of a long-forgotten Working Party which was set up four years ago by the Minister of Housing to examine the processes of refuse collection and to submit proposals for improvements that local authorities could make. 100 years ago | 1907 BIRDS DON’T SLUM IT London’s last rookery – from the point of view of bird life – let us make haste to explain – is Gray’s Inn, for the freehold of which there some time ago went abroad the rumour that a wealthy American, with a view to building development, had made the round bit to the Benchers of £300,000. The rooks – believed to have been there long before the middle of the last century – are fed regularly by the Benchers with dog biscuit beneath a catalpa tree said to have been imported by Sir Walter Raleigh.