Index takes the biscuit
A house price index based on the baked goods certain areas of the UK are famed for? Some might say silly season is upon us. Diary would not be one of them.
The Great British Bake Off kicked off this week and all of us here at EG Towers are taking it very seriously indeed. Property pastries are no laughing matter. So, what do the rankings look like?
No surprise that the Chelsea bun tops the list with an average house price of over £2m. The Bakewell tart comes in at a more modest £365,000 and the Eccles cake brings up the rear with the average Manchester house price standing at £147,000.
And the analysis goes further than a straightforward league. For future returns, an investment in Southwell, home to the Bramley apple pie, will be far sounder than that pricey Chelsea bun. Prices have risen by 7% in the past year in the former but have dropped by 3% in the latter.
As for the big- league battle of the breads, Hovis beats Warburtons as Macclesfield house prices outperform Bolton’s.
Silly season? Not a bit of it. This is the news you knead to help your dough rise (we couldn’t resist).
Birds of a feather
A parrot is a fun addition to any interview. Two is an amusing brace. Three? Three officially veers into weird trend territory. After meeting London mayoral hopeful Ivan Massow’s two macaws earlier this summer, EG couldn’t help but raise a smile when Anthony Lorenz’s parrot Sebastian became the latest EG Property Pet to grace this very page. But when visiting residential developer Mayapi’s Istanbul offices last week, Diary couldn’t believe the shrill, and now very familiar, trilling that filled the building. “Oh my god, is that another parrot?” Introducing Chico – a noisy chap who is, apparently, “just learning to speak”. It quickly became clear that his first “word” is the standard iPhone text message alert followed closely by the Twitter notification. Not. Annoying. At. All.
Bear’s with us
Putting together an overseas investor tour involving the prime minister (or VVIP, to use the parlance), two Cabinet colleagues, a further two ministers and a sizeable entourage including 60 or so businesses is no mean feat. Calendars shift, meetings move and the expected happens only sometimes. Somehow Regeneration Investment Organisation chairman Sir Michael Bear and the UKTI teams in at least three countries pulled it off. Nevertheless Diary, invited along, natch, was interested to know how the property types on tour – never the easiest to marshal at the best of times – managed to stay in check. By recalling the advert for cheap 1980s lager Hofmeister, maybe? “Follow the Bear…”
Leaves it out
It’s good to go all out and make an effort for a special event, but this week Diary heard of one highbrow property party host who may have branched out a little too far. They ordered a series of bespoke, glazed, decorative potted trees to be shipped all the way from London’s West End to Italy, to be positioned pride of place at their yacht party. Presumably there wasn’t anything glamorous enough on offer locally.
The art of murder
Out in the field for an upcoming feature (check back next week) Diary ran into a blood-splattered Douglas Booth. Luckily the Jupiter Ascending star’s injuries were fake – all part of the look for the actor’s role in a BBC remake of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Spotted just around the corner from EG Towers in WC2, Booth and fellow cast members including Charles Dance were roaming the set at the former St Martins School of Art, which has found a new role as a film location while it awaits redevelopment.
Spare our blushes
Estates Gazette prides itself on being the thinking man’s (and woman’s) property magazine of choice. We like to think we have high standards in the news and information we provide. But we are only human and sometimes, like everyone, we make a bit of a tool of ourselves. No further explanation needed. Eat your heart out, Private Eye.
