Congratulations to Alison Hardy, national head of the property litigation team at Squire Patton Boggs, who last weekend joined her fellow Freemen of the City of London in exercising their ancient right to herd sheep over London Bridge.
The telecoms expert and current chair of the Property Litigation Association may be one of the most proptech-savvy lawyers around – as demonstrated by her enthusiasm for blockchain and artificial intelligence in EG’s first-ever Agenda podcast – but she’s clearly at home with quaint traditions too. Ewe certainly couldn’t accuse her of looking sheepish.
Murray’s holiday reading
London Mayor Sadiq Khan is given to saying that solving the capital’s housing crisis will be a marathon, not a sprint. One could forgive James Murray, deputy mayor for housing, for deviating from the party line. Khan’s draft housing strategy emerged earlier this month but it fell to Murray to pull together the paper over the summer. Editing, Diary hears, took place on a beach in Tel Aviv – a location more suited for nice swim than a long run. Far be it from us to suggest this makes London’s housing crisis more of a gruelling triathlon – nor that it means they should now get on their bikes and fix it.
Curiouser and curiouser
Diary and Mrs Diary once went to look at a house and were happily critiquing the vendor’s terrible décor, only to notice a child hiding under the bed. Cue horror film music. Now the similar, yet even more disturbing, tale of “strange Chloe” has been named the UK’s weirdest house-hunting story. According to Propertymark’s top 10 rundown, a viewer was being shown around a flat by a landlord when a hand emerged from beneath the bed, as if beckoning them to join. The landlord’s response? “Not again, Chloe!” Other oddities on the list include an interview for a would-be tenant’s dog, an encounter with a swooping sugar glider (a kind of airborne possum) and a viewer walking in on the current occupants “getting amorous”. Another had even more of an eyeful from the naked oil paintings of the owner in every room. Househunting, eh. It’s enough to reduce you to tears.
The crying game
But when you find the right place, that’s when the real misery begins: the mortgage application. And exhaustive research from online broker Trussle has revealed that one in 10 first-time buyers admit to crying at some stage while trying to navigate the way through the process. That would mean around 27,000 emotional wrecks in 2016 alone. It’s a wonder that anyone ever moves house
at all.
A muse property
But then Diary hears word of one apartment on the market guaranteed to make you forget all the woes of home-buying – as long as you have a spare £2.3m. The agent Harrods Estates has shrewdly identified the USP for the Grade II listed property in London’s Sussex Gardens – it once belonged to socialite and Picasso “muse” Sharmini Tiruchelvam. She was heralded as one of the 10 most beautiful women in the world and, as well as posing for Pablo, she welcomed big names through her doors including Laurence Olivier, Omar Sharif, Elizabeth Taylor and Charlie Chaplin as a leading party hostess in the swinging 60s. If you want a flat that’s had a better social life than you, this is the property for you.
High life for Bourgeois
There are many different ways to celebrate an EG Award. A bottle of champagne is one. Two bottles of champagne another. But how many of this year’s winners celebrated by playing a three-hour set of Cure, Smashing Pumpkins and Rolling Stones songs? If you guessed two, well done. Fresh from accepting the gong for retail company of the year, Hammerson UK MD Mark Bourgeois took to the drums, joining James Cogavin of Lunson Mitchenall (another winner) among others in their band Brickwork, on stage at REVO in Liverpool. No doubt all eyes were on the leopard print shirt Bourgeois was sporting – at REVO, that is, not the awards…
Café what?
Diary loves a nice, shiny CGI-rendering of a projected development scheme. All the better if the architects have done a bit of subtle disguise work on the official branding of prospective tenants, like in this mock-up of the planned £1bn regeneration of Bolton. But dining at Café Douge? We’ll pass, thanks.
