Gabby gets gobby
Sports presenter, TV darling and now, seemingly, serial property gig presenter Gabby Logan started her after-dinner speech at this year’s IPF (Midlands) dinner by giving some of the 500-strong audience a jolly good ticking off.
She started by asking the assembled throng at Birmingham’s ICC: “Can you hear me at the back?” When she got a positive response, she added: “Well you bloody couldn’t hear Ciaran earlier could you? You rude b*@#*rds.” Guests at the back of the room immediately fell silent, after previously talking loudly through the speech of the IPF’s new national chairman Ciaran Carvalho.
Logan then went on to grab the room’s attention with an anecdote about Darren Williamson, the IPF’s new Midlands chairman. “During dinner, Darren mentioned that he slept on top of me for a couple of years at Durham University.” Logan quickly explained: “No not like that, he slept on the floor above me.”
According to Logan, who helped host the EG Awards last month, she has an “affinity with property”. She said: “I have earnt more from property than from telly in the last few years.” Find out how in EG’s Property Auction Buyers’ Guide, available at all good newsagents.
Let’s talk about… big data
The property industry should be paying attention to big data – but whether companies know how to use it effectively is a different matter. Speaking at Estates Gazette’s Property Asset Management Summit, where the rise of the robots and their use in property was on the agenda, Nikhil Vadgama, founder of data and artificial intelligence-led platform Placemake.io, said he thought the quote “big data is like teenage sex” accurately summed up the sector’s opinion. “Everyone talks about it, no one really knows what to do, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it and so they claim they are doing it,” he said.
It’s a wrap
Ever wondered what happens to those huge PVC building wraps once redevelopments are unveiled? Diary certainly has. Well, wonder no more. According to IM Properties, which is close to unveiling its £30m redevelopment of 55 Colmore Row in Birmingham, the building’s record-breaking wrap – the size of a wall of 50 double-decker buses – is being recycled to make weatherproof yurts for families in North Africa and parts of Greece. According to Embrace Building Wraps, which is working on the initiative with IM Properties, the hardwearing PVC along with the white reverse of the printed banner reflecting the heat of the sun’s rays makes them perfect for the job. That means a little piece of Brum will go a long way in helping to give shelter to those in need.
Treasury trumps appeals fee
If you want to appeal against your business rates revaluation come 1 April – as many will – you will now have to pay £300 if you are a larger business as fees are due to be brought in for the first time. But there is an interesting loophole for some very special big organisations. A category which includes small businesses and non-businesses will pay just £150. Valuations specialist Blake Penfold conspiratorially pointed out to the audience at Estates Gazette’s Property Asset Management summit that this category would include the Treasury itself. “It’s a great business being in government,” he said.
Marketing campaign tweet not so sweet
The UK Apartment Association’s tweet promoting build-to-rent appears to have chosen the most unlikely building to illustrate its point – the Candy brothers’ One Hyde Park, SW1. The super luxury block overlooking the royal park contains the most expensive apartment ever to go on the market. A snip at £75m. And rents in the block? Earlier this year a four-bedroom apartment in One Hyde Park became available for a cool £1.2m pa. Not sure that is quite the #BuildToRent sector the government wants to encourage.
