Good morning.
Rishi Sunak announced what amounted to his eighth mini-budget(£) yesterday.
Amid the bad news of an 11.3% fall in GDP, the worst contraction in 300 years(£), and borrowing to reach a record £394bn, there were some silver linings, including plans for a £4bn levelling-up fund, as well as a new infrastructure bank based in the north of England and a £7.1bn National Home Building Fund.
Not everyone was impressed with the plans(£), with the opposition calling the fund “pork-barrel politics”(£) and business groups offering a lukewarm welcome(£).
(Palace Capital’s share price jumped more than 6% on the news, though.)
And for some there was more stick than carrot, with a ban on new public loans to councils with any commercial property investment starting this morning(£).
After Sunak’s spending review, now is the time for real estate to heed a former chancellor’s advice and unite to show how it can help rebuild the UK and its finances, says EG’s editor.
Otherwise, it might become the cash cow needed for the £27bn of tax rises or cuts the OBR says will be needed to balance the books(£).
Much of England will remain in effective lockdown as the tier system restarts next week, with most parts of the country in the toughest two tiers. London(£) is expected to stay in tier two, though, thanks to some intense lobbying.
The Eat Out to Help Out(£) scheme handed £849m to restaurants and pubs, with more than 160m meals bought.
Netflix(£) plans to boost its UK production spending to £750m after announcing plans for a London HQ.
House prices will fall next year(£) as council tax bills rise.
Unite Students and Artisan Real Estate have received planning consent for a mixed-use scheme in Edinburgh.
And Stoford’s plans to build a new data centre at the Worcester Six business park have been approved.
A hefty rent rise at Burlington House is threatening the “continued existence”(£) of 300-year-old societies.
But the office is far from dead and CVAs are the greatest abuse of tenant-landlord relations since the Russian Revolution. Hear all about it on EG’s latest Property Podcast.
Longevity Partners is expanding to the US in a bid to become the first international specialist real estate sustainability advisory firm.
And The FT (£) looks to Japan for lessons of what can happen if you invest in the wrong sort of infrastructure projects.
And finally, as Donald Trump does all that he can to stay put in Washington, his daughter Ivanka is making plans to flee New York. She and husband Jared Kushner have submitted plans to upgrade their ‘cottage’ at the Trump golf course in Bedminster, an hour’s drive into New Jersey from Manhattan. The ‘modest’ plans will expand the main bedroom and add two new bedrooms and a study. They also include the addition of a new veranda, a spa and yoga complex, a heliport and four pickleball courts — which is apparently a sport.
