“While sad old London ossifies into a Qatari building park, young optimistic creative types are heading north for affordable housing… to swinging Tamworth.”
Substitute Berlin for Tamworth in Ian Martin’s matchless mockery in AJ this week and you have an uncomfortable new truth. Why? Because “young optimistic creative types” are indeed flocking to Berlin – because you can rent a bright studio flat in the centre of the city via Airbnb for £700 a month, half of London’s rates.
A New Zealand-based software firm I know has exploded from zero to 200 staff in three years. It has a handful of employees in Shoreditch. But its European HQ has been established in Berlin. One example does not prove a trend. Or does it? Savills has reported this week that Berlin and other smaller cities are becoming the big hitters.
Airbnb, in case you didn’t know, is a global site for renting residential property by the night. Can it be long before someone sets up a global site that links landlords with spare office space to by-the-week renters?
There are plenty of seedling sites around, but most want to act as intermediaries. Imagine a global giant that simply lets landlords post spare space and allows tenants to pay direct.
A thought likely to send a shudder through global brokers. Or are CBRE and JLL already sizing up doing an Airbnb?
Awarding imagination
Eddie Redmayne’s gibbering Oscar speech for his simulation of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything has put me in the mood to dole out a few awards. Gentlemen do not gibber.
The Stephen Hawking Intelligent Research award – CBRE
No irony intended. The conclusion by CBRE’s head of UK research, Miles Gibson, that the May general election will have “minimal impact” on commercial property is the most intelligent thing yet written on a topic subject to much manufactured angst. Residential, on the other hand…
Bandwagon award – Hammerson
Full marks for linking Fifty Shades of Grey to a 2.7% increase in retail sales during the first two weeks of February in Hammerson’s shopping centres containing cinemas.
A rush on cable ties, masking tape and rope no doubt contributed to the surge. Trading figures from Halfords are awaited with no interest.
The Cabbie’s “You what?” award – the BPF
This week British Property Federation chief Melanie Leech welcomed government consultation on how to speed up s106 negotiations. Why welcome faster ways to pay local authority bribes? Why not call for the shambolic system to be scrapped and replaced with an adjusted Community Infrastructure Levy? That’s right, the flat, easy-to-understand tax that was designed 10 years ago to replace s106.
The Methuselah Development award – the Metropolitan Police
Eighteen years on from the abandonment of Trenchard House in Soho by the Metropolitan Police, I am sitting in a restaurant opposite with Rick de Blaby, ex-MEPC boss, now newish boss of United House. It is joint developer with Barratt of 13 penthouses and 65 affordable homes replacing the brick section house where 215 policemen once ate and slept.
De Blaby is hoping builders Balfour Beatty will be finished by the summer. Mmm. Two of the penthouses have been sold at £2,300 per sq ft. “We will begin proper marketing in August,” says de Blaby, who is selling United to investors willing to chip in £100m. So, give it 12 months and Trenchard House may be inhabited again for the first time since 1997.
Far too boring to go into why it has taken 18 years. But the 2007 crash, the intervention by the Homes and Communities Agency, and meddling by the GLA all had delaying effects. If Veuve Cliquot would like to sponsor the award and give away a huge bottle of fizz containing eight standard bottles, I’m sure plenty more candidates could be found.
planet-property.net
