Forget the Open Championship and the US Open, there is only one golfing “major” in the eyes of agents. And, naturally, it’s called the Agent’s Open.
Now in its sixth year, the competition saw 32 investment agents hit the fairways at Highgate Golf Club, all seeking the coveted title of Top Golfer of the Year – and it ended in a thriller.
Acre Real Estate’s George Wilson and Savills’ James Vivian could not be separated after 18 holes, but Wilson held his nerve to triumph in a dramatic putt-off and take home the prize. Planning is already under way for next year, so if you’re an agent handy with a club, be sure to get in touch with Charles Curtis at Finn & Co.
Rising Stars meet raising star
The annual EG Rising Stars photoshoot is a highlight in our calendar, always abuzz with vibrant conversation as each year’s group of bright young things smile for the camera.
This year’s cohort was no different, and, set against the backdrop of London’s most chic warehouses, Printworks, they revealed their ultra-trendy music tastes, ranging from American funk band Vulfpeck, to indie group Palace to, er, Adele.
However, they were briefly lost for words when the conversation moved on to family and a security guard joined in, hollering: “I have 14 children!” Cue stunned silence.
Until later, when some of the stars discussed the practicalities of raising such a brood: “How does he afford them? Does he throw a cracker on the floor at Christmas and ask them to fight it out?”
Nothing certain but death and t…rampolines?
As part of what passes for its weekly duties, Diary likes to keep track of what harder-working colleagues are up to. You never know what fodder for the page might turn up from the richly varied lives of commercial property journalists – and seldom have they varied more richly than this week.
Exactly as one of EG’s cohort was learning all about “death tech” (how to harness maps and data to figure out where best to construct a crematorium), another was researching trampolines – no, not for personal use, he assures us, but “assessing the portfolio value of the current trampoline sector”. Yeah, right.
It just goes to show that, whatever the ups and downs of life (and death) – from six feet under, to six feet in the air – we’ve got you covered.
Meat market mastery
Pain in the leisure market is rife and the demise of Gaucho and Cau has seen the options for poor steak lovers cut back. Worse still, those customers holding gift vouchers left over from their Christmas stockings were told they could no longer spend them in the disappearing chain.
Don’t have a cow, man – enter rival Hawksmoor to save the day and hoover up a few customers.
“Administration is sh*t. Anyone with an unusable #CAU voucher is welcome to swap them for a round of drinks at any Hawksmoor or @FoxlowTweets when they eat with us to soften the blow of not being able to use them at Gaucho either,” it tweeted.
Slick. If only Gaucho’s marketing had been quite so shrewdly opportunistic.
The distracted NPPF
Diary has noted before its appreciation of a dank meme, and thinks there is much the world of property could do to embrace them in order for fast and effective communication of ideas.
Plaudits then to Matt O’Connell, national housing adviser at the CLA, for reviving one of 2017’s most ubiquitous examples – the distracted boyfriend meme – to illustrate a finer point of the new National Planning Policy Framework.
The picture puts it far better than Diary ever could:
https://twitter.com/matt_oc1/status/1022435895679574016
Kilting at windmills
You may have noticed Diary’s somewhat passionate support for England, land of its birth, during the World Cup – but, if you were to judge these things by grandparents, Diary would actually be three-quarters Scottish.
With that comes a lifelong familiarity with the similar, yet oh-so-very different language spoken north of the border: but we won’t give it laldy blethering on about when we were a bairn, lest we look like a complete numpty.
The unique Scots lexicon extends to property law, where pursuers and defenders clash over concepts like irritancy and confusion – but Diary heard a new one this week, courtesy of an article on Scottish lease reform: “kilting”.
Not, as it happens, the Caledonian answer to “suiting up”, it refers to the process of adapting the English form of lease for the Scottish legal jurisdiction. Just stick a kilt on it, as it were. So now you know.
