Blood brothers
When it comes to duos who know how to make the most out of business ventures, let’s hope that Ellandi’s Morgan Garfield and Mark Robinson’s efforts are more straight-laced than their criminal doppelgängers, the Krays. As Estates Gazette’s profile of the duo (7 May, p62) has already shown, these two are forces to be reckoned with. Kudos to Robinson for pointing out the visual similarities on his Twitter feed.
All is not as it seems
A shot of a raging Donald Trump raised a smile at the Knight Frank presentation on the M25 market at the Dorchester in London this week. The picture of the man who might be US president was featured beneath the words “geopolitical risks”. The overall message of the presentation was that the M25 market was fine, but a more interesting message came from a KF source on one of the breakfast tables. As of 1 May, the start of KF’s new financial year, the work-in-progress numbers in the commercial division stand exactly where they were at this time last year. In other words, talk of doom and gloom in the market is not matched by what is happening on the ground, despite the fact clients are putting off decisions until after the EU referendum in June. Diary forecasts a post-vote boom.
Prime property catches cold
Has investor appetite for bricks-and-mortar slowed? There are concerns that falling prices for central London homes have left the city’s market for luxury residential flats in danger of oversupply. Anthony Codling, analyst at Jefferies, has called this concern “Nine Elms disease”. Are tens of thousands of luxury flats being built just as the market for them crashes? Diary calls that a Nightmare on Nine Elms Street.
Getting hammered for charity
To the Props, the annual industry lunch that raises money for the Variety Club – an astonishing £410,000 and counting this year. However, such generosity doesn’t guarantee respect. Host Martin Bayfield, the 6ft 10 inch former England lock forward, didn’t have to forcibly eject anyone this time (the year he carried the considerably shorter Andrew Perloff from the stage will live long in Diary’s memory) but he was still on barbed form. “Mount Anvil?” he said, reading out the residential development shortlist. “Sounds more like an instruction than a name.”
High hopes
Deloitte Real Estate released its London Crane Survey this week with the news that there were 51 new starts in the year ending 31 March – a record high. So how (in)appropriate that this little gem popped into Diary’s inbox from an avid reader. Some may say the market is a little depressed at the moment, but it looks like it is on the up to us.
