With the number of millennials living with their parents booming, Jason Orme, property expert for the Homebuilding & Renovating Show, has been in touch with tips on how to cohabit with your adult children – with the ominous warning that you had better “prepare yourself for the long haul”.
There is advice on decoration (their old rooms will need to be brought up to date “based on the needs of the children and who they bring home with them”) and storage, but the fundamental starting point is to decide whether this is a flatshare situation, or if you’re going to split the family home into “individual, compartmentalised, mini flats”. Diary can’t help but think of the old Steptoe and Son solution of a partition dividing the living room – Albert and Harold were ahead of their time.
Are you being serviced?
When an e-mail subject begins “REVEALED” you know you are in for something big – and this one may well be the one you’ve all been waiting for. Thanks to the diligent work of Savoy Stewart, Diary is happy to share… at last… the “London boroughs with the highest number of serviced offices”. Taking the crown – by a country mile – is Westminster, which boasts 883 serviced offices. Rounding out the top five, Camden (374), Islington (315), Hackney (210) and Southwark (115) are all just floundering in Westminster’s wake. But pity the poor office workers of Harrow and Merton, who have but six such options available in each of their boroughs. And then there’s Bexley, Haringey and Sutton, for which “there was no data available”. Sad times. Savoy Stewart adds that 2,400 Brits apparently Google the term “serviced offices” each month. And here is Diary wasting its time on the internet searching for movie trailers and cat videos…
Collective meditation
You may recall Diary being particularly glum back on 20 July, after its invite for The Collective’s glamorous opening party for its Canary Wharf scheme was hastily retracted an hour before kick off. We’re still not over the disappointment that our plans to eat a few cocktail sausages and check out the swimming pool on level 20 were scuppered. But it probably wouldn’t been much of a view anyway, as EG revealed earlier this month that the scheme has run into delays, with many parts of the building – including that pool – yet to be completed. The 30 residents who signed up for a one-month, rent-free trial of the building (supposed to commence on 6 July) only moved in on 3 August and have voiced their frustrations to Diary about the delays. Perhaps, then, a little meditation would help? Diary has learnt The Collective has hired mindfulness company Levitate London to put on some meditative self-care sessions for residents. However, as the building still needs some finishing touches, residents will instead have to go to The Collective HQ in Bedford Square for the (hopefully otherwise relaxing) sessions. All together now: Ohmmm.
We don’t do requests
Diary is pleased to learn that it isn’t the only one relying on Facebook to keep track of what it was up to years ago. We received this blast from the past on Twitter from the clearly social media-savvy Sam Stafford, now regional strategic land director at Barratt Developments – a screen shot of a Diary story from 9 August 2014 about his blog, 50 Shades of Planning. Thanks for getting in touch, Sam, it’s hugely appreciated – but what’s all this about a plug for the 50 Shades of Planning podcast? You mean the one available at https://pod.co/50-shades-of-planning? And through Spotify, Apple and other reputable providers? Absolutely no chance. With all the 50 Shades references, we’re sure you’ll understand the tough love.
Staycation – all I ever wanted
Holidays in the UK – so-called “staycations” are definitely on the rise. Diary knows this because two separate people got in touch this week to tell us staycations are on the rise. City Relay, a London-based short-let property management company (which may, possibly, have a vested interest) tells us that “with the pound at its lowest level in years, UK citizens are increasingly choosing cheaper, hassle-free alternatives to holidaying abroad”. Apparently, nearly 45% of guests staying at City Relay’s properties in London are UK citizens – more than twice as many as in 2018. And the company predicts “this is only set to grow as Brexit Doomsday approaches” (its words, not ours , before we get letters). But not everybody is staycationing in the capital. Estate agent sellhousefast.uk went to the trouble of telling us that around 3,500 Brits search for “staycation” every month (that’s even more than “serviced offices”!) and that Cornwall is the UK coastal district with the most active holiday rentals (8,345). London, or the seaside? Cocktails in the West End or fish and chips on the pier? It’s a tough choice, but to be honest, Diary would still pick Florida…
