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 July, CNN reported that the Chinese hosted a formal Taliban envoy in Tianjin, demonstrating the CCP’s intentions to pursue greater engagement with the region on its western border. The move should send a signal to the United States that there is still much value in maintaining open diplomatic engagement, humanitarian aid and trade relationships with the […]
In a fortnight, after a year as president elect, I will become the new president of the RIBA. It is a job I never thought I would want to do – and for many good reasons. Not least because my father, an eminent modernist architect, always spoke of RIBA Presidents AD. The AD standing for Alcoholic […]
(By the time this article is published, Hurricane Ida will have made landfall and the aftermath will be already under assessment. One hopes, as always, that the damage is minimal in terms of lives and property, but the same nature which we so readily associate with beauty and balance has a brutal, indiscriminate side. My […]
It’s time we did it again. There has been much talk about a potential inflation surge as countries lift pandemic restrictions and seek to resume normal economic activity. In recent months, US prices have risen more than 5% year-on-year. In the UK, price growth has been slower and was even slightly below expectations for July, but is likely to […]
The notion that stakeholders and stockholders battle for control of major business corporations is an oversimplification of a much more complex reality involving managers, regulators, investors and social justice warriors (SJW), many of whom seem to have forgotten the reasons that corporations formed in the first place. All the major players need level-headed thinking on […]
That quote from a hit by Gwen Guthrie is rather echoing this morning as we look at another aspect of the housing crisis. I point out the song link partly because there was quite a miss last night on a reference to the film Escape from New York on Twitter. That was a theme of […]
Post-Covid work patterns will have a significant effect going forward in Europe. During the Covid-19 lockdowns, the share of office employees working some time or usually from home more than doubled, from 28% in 2018 to 67% in July 2020 across the EU’s 27 countries (source: Eurofound). Of course, this increase has not gone unnoticed, […]
The battle between inflation hawks and doves is heating up. The year-over-year change in the Consumer Price Index is 5.4%, significantly above average. This figure, from the end of July, comes after several months of economy-wide price hikes. But does this portend high inflation for the foreseeable future? Or will inflation come back down soon? Furthermore, […]
It was inevitable that lumber prices would eventually return to some state of normalcy. I wrote an article less than 50 days ago noting that futures and cash prices, despite having quadrupled in slightly over a year, had dropped 40% in June 2021. Pandemic measures were being lifted, the effect of stimulus payments were receding, and owing […]
