The pandemic will have a long tail, resulting in a rollercoaster property cycle in the coming years. June 21st – hooray! We have a date for a return to normal (sort of). The pricing-in of some vaccine optimism in the financial markets in December 2020 and January 2021 is now looking justified, even if the […]
Offices are starting to strengthen, and reduced supply is making even retail more attractive – as value emerges, it’s time to get back in the game. The UK quoted property sector and indeed much of the direct property market has not had the greatest start to the year. Mitigating circumstances of course, but the quoted […]
The first in a three-part series examines how the country has been transformed (for the better) in the past few decades. The UK economy looks fundamentally different now from its image just 30 years ago. It is simply unrecognisable – and for the better, yes, even in these momentarily unhealthy times. From a practically sclerotic […]
A fascinating exchange played out in the UK’s House of Lords on 2 June 2020. Neil Ferguson, the physicist from Imperial College London who created the main epidemiology model behind the lockdowns, faced his first serious questioning about the predictive performance of his work. Ferguson predicted catastrophic death tolls back on 16 March 2020 unless […]
The railways made a rapid impact on Britain. It was only in 1830 that inter-city rail travel started with the link between Liverpool and Manchester, but by 1840, they, and the other four largest English cities (Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds and Bristol), were all linked to London. Trains offered substantial savings in time and comfort over […]
Limitations to our flight movements due to the pandemic remain frustrating, but unrestricted personal air travel will have to resume. When it does, the eurozone’s tourist-hungry Club Med economies will have essentially lost two years of important hard-currency earnings. On top of such an unhelpful financial legacy, they potentially face strong recovery headwinds; up against […]
The campaign in Berlin to drive a stake through the heart of large German residential landlords moved into its second phase last week, when the Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co. movement began collecting signatures in its petition to cut large housing owners down to size. The goal is to expropriate the holdings of landlords owning […]
Earlier this month, the UK and Ghana announced the signing of a long-anticipated bilateral economic partnership agreement (EPA) aiming to replicate pre-Brexit trading arrangements and provide for the two countries’ respective long-term economic ambitions. To quote UK authorities, the deal means that: “Ghanaian products including bananas, tinned tuna and cocoa will benefit from tariff-free access […]
You might be surprised to hear that when it comes to applying for debt, high net worth individuals (HNWIs) find themselves at an immediate disadvantage. This stems from the inherent complexity of their income structures and finances. There is a general saying that the wealthier an individual, the more complicated their finances typically are. Based […]
Total housing starts fell to a 1.421 million annual rate from a 1.584 million pace in January, a 10.3% decrease. Month-to-month volatility in housing construction can be influenced by weather conditions and conditions in significant portions of the country were unfavourable in February. From a year ago, total starts are off 9.3%. The dominant single-family […]
