Good morning. What better way to start the most depressing day of the year than with a clutch of property stories, torn from the pages of the national press?
Intu will issue a £1bn cash-call when it publishes its results next month. The shopping centre owner is struggling with a £5bn debt mountain.
Boris Johnson is planning to move the House of Lords to York(£), in an attempt to connect with the regions(£)…
… Although that connection might be a little more difficult, after the Oakervee report seems to suggest ‘pausing’ the northern arm of HS2(£). Construction bosses are not impressed(£).
House sellers are, though, as the election victory has boosted house prices(£) by 2.3%. Rightmove reckons the Conservative win added nearly £7,000 to the average house price.
Meanwhile, TV property guru Sarah Beeny has been landed with an unsellable wreck, after the collapse of Emoov undermined her Tepilo agency with huge debts(£).
The planned £2bn Stonehenge tunnel could be scrapped(£) by the Treasury as a waste of money. It’s solution to the A303 bottleneck? Use the M5.
Meanwhile Boris Johnson’s dream of a plethora of post-Brexit freeports(£) has been criticised by his own advisers, who say it would distort markets and create “a lot of losers”.
Department store doyenne Beales enters administration today(£), as the quest for a buyer continues.
And the papers have some nice juicy dirt on the ‘shady’ dealings of Isabel dos Santos(£), the Angolan billionaire who has amassed a property empire while in exile in London.
Thousands of would-be self-builders have been left in limbo(£) by local authorities, which have ignored their duty to find suitable land…
… And Prince Harry has said he will cough-up for the rent, upkeep and refurbishment of Frogmore Cottage. That’ll be £2.4m and £10,000 a month, thanks!
And finally, Devon locals are up in arms over plans by a Chinese businessman to turn a grade I listed manor into a party palace(£). Canonteign Manor, on the fringes of Dartmoor, has a long history of being used for booze-fuelled parties, as it was where Charles I stayed with his Cavaliers at the start of the Civil War. But locals fear the change of use to a holiday let will encourage drunkards from London to run riot. Not if they can’t get past the Stonehenge bottleneck, they won’t.
