The news on 2 December will have brought a beaming smile to the person responsible for the morning meeting at the Bank of England. They will have been able to leave all the house copies of the Financial Times open at this page. UK household wealth reaches record high despite economic hit from Covid. Such […]
In this very special series of exclusive articles for The Property Chronicle, Australian property legend Norman Harker reflects on his extraordinary 50-year life in real estate. He will pull no punches partly because, as he freely admits, Norman has a limited life expectancy of five years from December 2018 due to a diagnosed terminal blood […]
In November 2021, 180 world leaders gathered in Glasgow, Scotland, for COP26, the United Nations’ annual climate summit. But once the wheels of their private jets had touched down on domestic tarmac, it was unclear what exactly this fortnight of doomsday lecturing had accomplished. Professional truant Greta Thunberg eloquently summarised the event as “blah, blah, blah”, and advised […]
It always comes back to supply and demand. Inflation in small doses can stimulate property markets, diverting investor demand out of fixed income, but harmful should it lead to rate hikes. Property offers long-term core investors considerable inflation protection, but is not a short-term ‘hedge’. Core investors need to align to wider future societal trends […]
Originally published January 2021. The European real estate universe grows ever move diverse by the year, with the constant geographical expansion of previous times now replaced by a push into new sectors and, more fundamentally, new ways of investing, with an exposure to the operational side of the asset. This has been driven by a […]
China’s dominance in manufacturing has made it the factory of the world. The subsequent economic growth enriched an ever-expanding middle class, and the country’s retail industry has quickly adapted to supply a growing appetite for consumption. Some of these developments in the way people spend their money, powered by the latest technology, will soon be […]
Originally published August 2021. Hedging your bets. As the rhetoric around inflation has increased, so too has scrutiny around commercial property, an asset class typically perceived to offer an inflation hedge. First, there are questions around what measure of inflation property is meant to hedge against – the difference between CPI and RPI, for example, is […]
I regularly fly with KLM from Minneapolis to New Delhi, and always stop over in Amsterdam. I am frequently in Minneapolis for research and this is my route to go home to take a break from work. I have done the journey so many times that I know almost all the shops at Schiphol inside […]
Am I availing myself of any old sterling excuse? In the interregnum between voting to leave the EU and actually doing so, I claimed the UK’s final exit would prove largely seamless. And, in being seamless, it would completely remove the weight of uncertainty holding down sterling. My expectation has been for sterling to ‘gap […]
US dollar food commodity prices have risen 40% since the onset of Covid-19 in March 2020. This sharp price jump, shown in the graph below, has reversed a painful period of farm produce deflation during the previous seven years. In fact, farm gate prices have returned almost to their nominal and real levels from the […]
