Originally published April 2022. Land prices should now out-perform other asset classes, especially when compared to their underperformance during the previous period of deflation, argues this writer. In November I suggested that inflation would continue, rather than being merely transitory. Since then, we have seen US inflation rise to 7% (for the year to December 2021, US […]
Up to 8% of all global anthropogenic human-made emissions are due to just one material, cement. And our use of it is rising. The cement and concrete industry is encouraging this use, for example, by claiming that using concrete will reduce the “whole life” carbon emissions from buildings. The absence of regulations to measure this […]
If all of the vehicles in the world were to convert to electric, would it be quieter? – Joseph, age 10, Chatham, New Jersey If everyone everywhere received a free electric vehicle at the same time – and owners were required to travel at really slow speeds across well-maintained roads – the world would sound […]
When an old man prepares for open-heart surgery, he maintains a confident demeanor and so does his good wife. He has an excellent surgeon and the procedure has been around since he was a teenager, pioneered by Dr Walt Lillehei of Minneapolis. All is well. Stay calm and pull your socks up. “I come from […]
The latest UK Anti-Money Laundering (AML) National Risk Assessment (2020) assessed the UK’s property sector as high risk for money laundering (ML). It attributes this to certain attributes and features of the sector, market participants and transactions undertaken within it, for example: Transactions frequently involve the (international) transfer of large volumes of money; Parties instructing […]
We’re in the middle of a remote working revolution. In the UK, though remote working was slowly growing before the pandemic, in 2020 the number of people working from home doubled. While this rapid rise can be explained by COVID lockdowns, a recent survey my colleagues and I conducted with 2,000 London workers found that […]
Originally published January 2022. It’s time to widen the net. Social changes accelerated by Covid-19 are shaking the property investor community to its core as risks increase from investing in traditional ways. This is important to us all, as a material part of most of our pensions are invested in property. Traditionally, offices and retail […]
Property and inflation. My friend, colleague and fellow co-head of research, Kevin White, has spent the past few months quoting Mark Twain and telling me that, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes”. The reason for the quote is to reassure that, even in this period of high inflation, commercial property should continue to […]
Another instalment in a series of articles detailing how to design a secure, income-producing portfolio. Several years ago, a small experiment led to a terrifying discovery. I was helping a family investment office do some long-range planning and I was not shy about sharing with them the fundamental ideas from my earlier articles: namely, that […]
Europe sweats over the future of Russia’s gas supply. The invasion of Ukraine on February 24 and the nearly five months of war that have followed have reminded many European countries of the stark reality of their energy dependence on Russia. For ten days, western Europe has sweated on the resumption of gas supplies through the […]
