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Aidan G-D is a Hertfordshire school boy currently studying for his GCSE's and is a talented young athlete and basketball player who has already represented England several times. Trident are sponsoring him for his campaign to reach the Euros in 2013 and long term goal to represent GB at U20 Level.
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Articles

The stamp duty holiday extension could benefit 300,000 sales.
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More landlords are selling up amid fears of an imminent capital gains rise.
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Anticipated investor interest and pent up demand for a return to travel should lead to a bounce back in demand for hotels, new research has found.
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The West End will recover from the Covid-19 pandemic faster than the City of London, according to K&K Property Holdings chief executive Kino Law.
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The UK’s builders have appealed for more support as 27% report falling workloads.
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The majority of private capital investment into UK real estate came from international investors in 2020, while residential properties outshone other sectors on the global stage.
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Shareholders will be encouraged to punish FTSE 350 companies that don’t do enough to improve diversity on their boards.
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Leasing across the Central London office market was down by 56% (6.5m sq ft) in 2020, compared to 2019.
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Tighter controls for Irish domiciled property funds are being considered by the country’s Central Bank.
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A group of 1,600 Londoners made more in capital gains in 2019 than the entire north of England.
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By this time next week a planning application for Britain’s first gigafactory will have been submitted to Northumberland county council.
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Total returns in property are forecast to rise by 3.8% in 2021, led by industrial and grocery retailing, according to a new report from Colliers International.
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Almost a third of new houses completed last year were sold off-plan as buyers sought extra room during lockdown.
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A new breed of communal food halls could be arriving on a high street near you
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The number of listed property companies issuing profit warnings rose by 400% last year, as the sector struggled to cope amid 10 months of coronavirus restrictions.
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For London’s office investment market, the new year usually brings a flurry of ‘for sale’ signs. But with the UK’s third coronavirus lockdown stretching long into 2021, potential buyers have been left twiddling their thumbs after only a handful of buildings were put on the block in the opening six weeks of the year.
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The healthcare real estate market is set to enjoy a flurry of activity this year, according to a major new survey of investors, lenders, operators and developers.
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More than 10 million sq ft of rateable office space disappeared in England and Wales in the year before the coronavirus pandemic hit, according to new research.
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The race for last-mile food delivery space in London and the UK is on with Deliveroo, Weezy, Ocado and Getir all seeking new sites.
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Americans took out a record $1.2tn of mortgage loans in the final three months of 2020.
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House prices across the UK climbed by 8.5% during 2020 to reach a record average of £252,000.
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More than a thousand stores have closed since the start of the year, with hundreds of retail jobs being lost each day.
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New York has lengthened its lead over London as the world’s leading financial centre in the eyes of executives.
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Homes England and United Trust Bank (UTB) have launched a £250m “housing accelerator fund” for SMEs.
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Close to half a million families have been fallen behind on rents or mortgage payments because of the coronavirus.
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Demand for detached houses boomed during the lockdowns, driving up prices three times faster than for flats.

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Ministers are drawing up plans to extend the moratorium on landlords’ ability to evict tenants over unpaid rent.
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Experts warn that the retail property sector faces a bleaker future than it did in 2008 at the height of the global financial crisis and that “hundreds” of distressed assets could come to market at bargain-basement prices.
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They might lack the prestige of an office skyscraper or the glamour of a luxury block of flats, but that has not stopped petrol stations hitting the headlines lately.
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Robert Jenrick is facing growing opposition from high street businesses over plans to allow town centres to convert to housing without planning.
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Retail property rent collection has fallen compared to the previous quarter, while other markets have performed closer to pre-pandemic levels.
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More than half a million companies are at risk of collapsing by the spring unless the government extends Covid support schemes.
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It is by far the country’s most controversial property scheme. A retail, leisure and residential redevelopment of one of Manchester’s true heritage assets, which will cost some prominent local figures their homes. With the planning application already in, objections number in the literal millions.
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Retail property rent collection has fallen compared to the previous quarter, while other markets have performed closer to pre-pandemic levels.
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Britain’s drink-led pub and restaurant groups suffered a near wipe-out in sales during November, as England went into four-week lockdown and tougher restrictions continued in Scotland and Wales.
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More than 10% of people expect the “boom times” for the industrial sector to end in 2021, according to an industry survey.
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Christmas is looking grim for the UK’s hospitality sector. This time last year, pubs, bars and restaurants were packed with Britons spending big on drinks, meals and nights out in the run up to 25 December.
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Small developers have increased the size of new site requirements, rising threefold in a year, a new survey has revealed.
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Having become the darling of leasing agents in recent years, technology companies around the world could now lead the way in rethinking what a modern office should be.
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Britain’s economy will bounce back next year from the Covid pandemic but don’t expect a full recovery until the end of 2022.
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Britain’s economy will bounce back next year from the Covid pandemic but don’t expect a full recovery until the end of 2022.
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Capital values across the UK’s commercial property sectors have largely held out against the challenges of the latest lockdown, inching down by just 0.1% during January.
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The government has extended the ban on evicting commercial tenants.
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COMMENT Female representation in the property industry has improved markedly in recent years, but the headway we have made now risks being derailed by Covid-19. The pandemic has brought challenges for everyone, but as the new year ushered in a return to national lockdowns, evidence suggests that women are bearing some of the biggest burdens
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New lending to hotels in the UK has stalled – and despite hopes of a rapid recovery once Covid-19 restrictions ease, there is likely to be more pain ahead for the market.
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A three-year high for industrial real estate meant November was the first month since October 2018 in which CBRE’s all-property index showed anything other than negative capital growth.
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Pub owners are taking advantage of the pandemic to re-establish the centuries-old beer tie.

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House prices and rents in London and the Midlands may be heading for a nasty fall thanks to a “mass exodus of foreign workers”.
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The Cabinet Office is issuing a call for tenders on providing real estate services for its £500m Crown Commercial Service framework, used by central government and all UK public sector bodies.
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The economy will take another two years to recover from the pandemic, a leading think tank has warned.
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The November lockdown brought to an end a five month retail rebound.
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New-build digital infrastructure is expected to deliver the highest returns, whilst the UK looks set to outperform Europe across several real asset sectors and strategies in the medium term, according to the second annual Real Assets House View from Aviva Investors.
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A record year for logistics space take-up in the UK has helped to drive a notable lift in the European market, according to research from Savills.
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The number of completed build-to-rent homes increased by 23% in 2020, according to the British Property Federation.
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The construction sector defied the lockdown to record its biggest rise in new orders in six years.


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The number of build-to-rent homes under construction in the capital has shown zero growth over a year, as investors opt for regional cities over the capital.
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London has risen to become the second most attractive European city for property investment and development.
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Some of Britain’s biggest retail chains have joined forces to call for an overhaul of business rates.
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Companies will have borrowed more than £60bn to stay afloat during the pandemic by the end of this year.
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Footfall figures show that shopper numbers continued to improve for the fifth successive month in October, according to Ipsos Retail Performance which collects data from over 600 towns and cities across the UK.
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Natwest Group has launched the sale of a distressed commercial property loan portfolio worth more than £550m.
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Midlands-focused Real Estate Investors has offered an upbeat outlook on out-of-town offices, predicting stronger occupier demand as the second lockdown looms.
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Allsop’s fifth online auction since the March lockdown resulted in the sale of 156 lots, raising £38m with a success rate of 73%.
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Real estate continues to be the sector hardest hit by the Covid-19 crisis, with 62,615 companies in financial distress, new research shows.
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Futurists may see Covid as the catalyst that will transform us all into digital nomads, but I disagree. The pandemic isn’t about to kill the office market. Instead, it will accelerate structural changes already taking place, such as the rise of flexible work practices.
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Companies have lodged 183,860 appeals to reduce their business rates bills in the past six months, as the pandemic continues to impact offices, shops and restaurants.
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Unlisted property funds with a large exposure to the retail market saw their returns continue to drop in the final quarter of 2020.
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Data centres rents are set to increase by 3% in the next 12 months, according to the latest RICS quarterly commercial property survey.
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Demand for supermarket property assets in the UK is expected to continue as investors look for a source of stable rental income.
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The final quarter of 2020 saw a 43% increase in property transactions than the previous quarter as homebuyers looked to take advantage of the stamp duty holiday, according to the latest figures from HMRC.
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The flexible and co-working office sectors are set to see a rise in forced consolidation as the coronavirus pandemic poses the industry its greatest challenge yet and widens a gap between leaders and laggards.
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The tentative recovery of UK retail has been all but reversed.
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Estate agents are calling for an extension to the stamp duty holiday as thousands more queue to complete before the clock runs down.
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Accounting giant KPMG has become the latest major occupier expecting to reduce its office footprint, announced as part of a swathe of measures in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
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House prices are set to drop by the end of 2021 before growing again the following year, according to JLL’s UK and London Residential Forecast.
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Global investors have as much as £46bn trained on London’s office investment market, according to research, as property dealmakers in the capital brace for a flurry of activity when it emerges from lockdown.
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There are no black business leaders in the top three jobs at any of Britain’s biggest listed companies.
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Europe’s biggest shopping centre landlords face a gruelling 12 months, with crashing rents and values falling by 30%.
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Landlords have received 65% commercial rent due for the December quarter, according to data from property management platform Re-Leased.
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Q3 commercial rent collections have reached 77% at the 21-day point, according to research from Cushman & Wakefield.
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The Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit are both driving a rise in demand for space from European logistics occupiers, according to a new survey by CBRE and market analysis company Analytiqa.
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JLL has revised its house price forecasts with a 1.5% decline anticipated in 2021, following the end of the stamp duty holiday, as unemployment and affordability pressures bite.
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Fast food, homeware and jewellery sales are up in the first three full months since the reopening of the retail sector, according to data from Savills.
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Office and residential scheme completions have soared in key regional cities, defying the odds during the coronavirus pandemic
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Asset managers are seeking to raise almost $300bn to plough into private lending deals with groups such as Goldman Sachs and Oaktree.
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The British Property Federation (BPF) has slammed the government’s proposals to allow for easier residential conversions on the high street.
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More than one in three medium-sized firms expect to reduce the amount of office space they hold in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, according to a survey examining future commercial property demand.
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New rules that allow developers and landlords to bypass planning permission could create more than 170,000 homes.
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Converting shops to homes could “destroy town centres”, the BPF has declared.
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Last week, a £200m scheme for a life sciences building developed by Legal & General and the University of Oxford received planning permission from Oxford City Council, paving the way for the city’s largest-ever development and underlining growing investor interest in the life sciences sector.
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The banking industry is overseeing plans for an agency to collect overdue government-backed Covid-19 loans
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Last year, many property sectors struggled as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, one sector that bucked the trend and managed to thrive despite national lockdowns and the recessionary climate was self-storage.
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The rush to take advantage of the stamp duty holiday has led to conveyancers and lenders struggling to keep up.
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Last week, a £200m scheme for a life sciences building developed by Legal & General and the University of Oxford received planning permission from Oxford City Council, paving the way for the city’s largest-ever development and underlining growing investor interest in the life sciences sector.
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Some 68% of UK pension fund investors intend to ramp up investment in renewable energy infrastructure over the next five years, according to a survey from Alpha Real Capital.
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The proportion of empty shops in Britain edged up to 13.7% during the fourth quarter, as the pandemic continued to take its toll on the retail sector.
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Investment into build-to-rent has surged from the lowest quarterly volume on record to the highest, with £1.43bn transacted in Q3.
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The City of London is attempting to reinvent itself as a start-up hub to encourage more small businesses to “re-enter the city centre”.
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Fewer homes are coming to the market in 2021 as resurging coronavirus cases make homeowners play safe.
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The amount of office space being brought back to market has seen the strongest rate of increase since the 2007 global financial crisis, according to RICS’ Q4 UK commercial market survey.
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Investment into build-to-rent has surged from the lowest quarterly volume on record to the highest, with £1.43bn transacted in Q3.
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Cold storage accounts for 12% of all warehouse space in the UK, a report from Savills and the Cold Chain Federation has revealed.
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The South East office market enjoyed a much-needed uptick in take-up during the final quarter of 2020.
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Logistics and warehousing companies in the Netherlands are being inundated with inquiries from British businesses.
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Thousands of homeowners could face the threat of repossession when mortgage holidays end next month.
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COMMENT Technology is accelerating the transformation of the UK’s senior living sector. Antiquated notions of retirement villages as sleepy rural nursing homes are long behind us.
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The ways in which real estate investment trusts are taxed, treated and even how many properties they can hold could change as part of a wide-ranging government consultation on the future of the country’s £9.9tn funds industry.
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The rate of shop closures in the UK for H1 2020 has surged over 70% when compared to H1 2019, a study has revealed.
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Predicting what the coming year may hold for London’s real estate market is difficult, particularly given the recent introduction of tier-four restrictions, but the capital’s property advisers and agents are trying hard to find cause for cheer.
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The volume of floorspace available to be sublet from existing occupiers in London has soared by 67% since lockdown began in March, Property Week can reveal.
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High street lenders are bracing for a wave of mortgage and business defaults in the coming months
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The UK’s non-listed real estate sector has been identified as the “obvious weak link” in an otherwise robust performance from European property in Q3, with returns lagging behind its counterparts on the continent.
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Flexible office take-up has struggled to take off this year as Covid-19 continues to hit the market.
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A panel of leading industry figures has been chosen to advise on an independent review on investment valuation practices, carried out on behalf of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
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The mood among UK property investors is fearful as Covid-19 has put particular pressures on them in office, retail and buy-to-let properties.
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Don’t believe the doom and gloom, house prices will rise by 4% next year.
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In September, outflows from open-ended property funds returned to similar levels seen in January as a small number of funds reopened – but they are not expected to now soar to the record levels seen in March.
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London’s super-prime property market, comprising homes worth £10m or more, has enjoyed a surge of activity this year.
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It is by far the country’s most controversial property scheme. A retail, leisure and residential redevelopment of one of Manchester’s true heritage assets, which will cost some prominent local figures their homes. With the planning application already in, objections number in the literal millions.
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Properties in the leisure sector have collected just 29% of September rents owed so far, according to new research from Colliers International.
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Britain’s drink-led pub and restaurant groups suffered a near wipe-out in sales during November, as England went into four-week lockdown and tougher restrictions continued in Scotland and Wales.
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Industry leaders have warned that the North West’s recovery will be hampered by new lockdown restrictions in the Liverpool City Region without extra funding.
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Demand for logistics space in Q3 2020 was the busiest on record, with around 16m sq ft of space transacted, according to a report from Cushman & Wakefield.
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Christmas is looking grim for the UK’s hospitality sector. This time last year, pubs, bars and restaurants were packed with Britons spending big on drinks, meals and nights out in the run up to 25 December.
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Having become the darling of leasing agents in recent years, technology companies around the world could now lead the way in rethinking what a modern office should be.
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Over September, UK commercial property capital values declined by 0.3%, the third consecutive monthly fall, to produce a total quarterly decrease of 0.9%, according to the CBRE UK Monthly Index.
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Breaches of property loan terms by borrowers are likely to become more widespread in European markets by the end of the first quarter of 2021, following a prolonged period of forbearance by lenders, according to Knight Frank’s head of debt advisory.
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London office investment agents are cautiously optimistic about the fourth quarter following a number of high-profile deals.
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UK hotel investment volumes are down by 54.4% to £1.63bn over the first three quarters of the year compared with 2019, according to Savills.
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Occupancy rates have increased across Europe’s self-storage market according to JLL’s European Self Storage Annual Survey in conjunction with the Federation of European Self Storage Associations (FEDESSA).
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More than 85% of London-based hospitality operators do not consider their existing or new leasing agreements with landlords to be good enough to help them survive trading restrictions, according to research from Cedar Green.

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Commercial property deals across EMEA could reach €100bn (£91bn) in Q4 if “smoother waters prevail”, according to Colliers International.
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Take-up of logistics space during the third quarter hit 13.3m sq ft across the UK, 111% up on the same period in 2019, according to CBRE.
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Investment volumes for central London’ commercial property market are 46% down on 2019 with £4.4bn transacted by the end of the third quarter, according to Savills
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Business investment on buildings and structures has fallen by a record 35.4%, according to new government figures.
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The double threat of a no-deal Brexit and Covid-19 could force major property funds to stay gated until next year, predict experts
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Buy-to-let landlords who sold up to take advantage of the recent ‘mini-boom’ could face huge tax penalties.
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A record amount of warehouse space was let in the past three months.
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The build-to-rent market could triple in size in the the next few years, suggests new data from Knight Frank.
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Student accommodation operators are drawing up emergency plans for full-building lockdowns after Covid-19 outbreaks at a swathe of UK universities forced thousands of students to self-isolate in their residences.
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House prices have risen at their fastest pace in four years as the market continues to defy the downturn in the economy.
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Retailers have paid just 13% of rents for this quarter
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Searches for office space in satellite towns including Coventry, Hayes and Slough rose by 70% in July, compared with enquiries at the beginning of the year, according to new research from EG Propertylink
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Landlords have collected 22.1% of commercial rents due on September quarter day.
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Office occupation has not diminished following the government’s U-turn on working from home, sticking at around a third of pre-lockdown levels during September, according to proptech firm Metrikus.
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The funding gap in the UK real estate investment market is less than half of what it stood at during the great financial crisis, according to analysts at AEW.
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Bullish bosses are stepping up recruitment according to two closely watched surveys.
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The UK PSBA market growth has shrunk to 2.6% in 2020, with 25,000 new beds added to the market in 2020 compared to 36,000 new beds in 2019, according to new data from StuRents.
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Shopper numbers have fallen by 3% since the government’s 10pm curfew was introduced.
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Covid could cost the West End’s arts and culture sector £4.7bn in 2024 – a decrease of 97% in annual gross value added, compared with 2019, according to a new worst-case-scenario report from Arup.
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The trade body representing the retail property industry has warned that rent arrears could pass £2bn after today’s quarter day.
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More than £800m was added to the value of some of Britain’s biggest listed property companies amid speculation over future takeover activity.
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Commercial properties in the US have lost as much as a quarter of their value or more.
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The share of homes bought by first-time buyers is set to drop for the first time in five years.
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The recent revival of the housing market is beginning to fall flat as demand for bigger properties dwindles.
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Coffee shops have become one of the biggest high street casualties, after figures revealed only half have reopened since March.
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Britain’s commercial rent arrears will top £4.5bn this week, as another quarter day bill goes unpaid.
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Hundreds of City firms are at risk of collapse as the pandemic continues.
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Debt collectors in the US have been on a hiring spree as they prepare for a wave of property loan defaulters.
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The Flexible Space Association has written to the chancellor urging him to give new support to the flexible workspace industry, following the prime minister’s announcement that office workers should return to working from home if they can.
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The hospitality sector has slammed the government’s “illogical” decision to introduce a 10pm curfew as fears grow that it could prove the final straw for operators that had only just started to recover from lockdown.
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UK listed property companies collected just 67% of the £1.1bn in rent they were due on the last quarter day in June, new analysis of real estate investment trusts reveals.
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Investment volumes in the EMEA real estate market could double in Q4 compared with the numbers registered in Q2 and Q3 thanks to improved market sentiment and delayed deals from earlier in the year finally concluding, according to a capital market expert at Colliers International.
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Property is “seriously lacking” in socio-economic diversity, with its workforce dominated by people who are privately educated or come from more privileged backgrounds, new research finds.
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A quarter of British pubs and restaurants fear collapse before Christmas without further government support.
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An independent group of housing leaders has called on the government to provide a £1.3bn fund to buy up private housing for social rent.
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House sales jumped by 15.6% in August as buyers took advantage of the government’s stamp duty holiday.
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The new chairman of Standard Life Investments Property Income Trust has said the UK economy should “rebound strongly” next year if another national lockdown can be avoided – but warned that real estate values will remain weak.
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Shares in the listed housebuilders have tumbled on the stock exchange, after rising Covid-19 rates put London stocks in a sea of red.
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A second wave of Covid-19 would cost the economy £250m a day.
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Prices for three and four bedroom homes have hit record highs.
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Factory-built homes could account for a quarter of Britain’s annual supply under plans being considered by Downing Street.
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UK property funds are keeping trading suspensions in place over fears of an investor run.
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Appetite for office assets and student accommodation has plummeted in the wake of Covid-19, according to research from CMS
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The Bank of England has moved closer to introducing negative interest rates.
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Weekly footfall in the West End is down 56% compared to last year, with activity remaining low three months after lockdown was lifted.
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Property industry trade bodies have slammed the government’s decision to extend the ban on evicting commercial tenants until the end of the year.
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EDITOR’s COMMENT This week’s leader is dedicated to the growing number of occupiers that are, quite frankly and quite bluntly, taking the piss.
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The UK care home sector is recovering following the initial impact of Covid-19, according to a research report by Knight Frank.
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Westminster City Council has proposed a new policy to be included in its City Plan 2019-40 which would protect office space within the area following the government’s planning reforms.
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In SE1, office space availability has increased by 45% since lockdown began to hit a six-year high, according to Union Street Partners.
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Pubs in England and Wales are “vanishing” at a rate of 40 a month.

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UK retailers have been hit by the first weekly fall in visitor numbers since the depths of lockdown.
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The government is preparing to extend the ban on commercial evictions until the end of the year.
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Female fund managers will not achieve equal status with male colleagues for two centuries if the promotion of women continues at the present rate.

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House prices will fall almost 14% next year, once the temporary stamp duty cut ends and the true impact of coronavirus is felt.
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First time buyers are facing a credit crunch as Britain’s biggest banks axe low deposit loans.
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In his annual letter to shareholders in January, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink laid out how the company was pivoting to putting environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles at the core of its investment strategy. Rather than the tokenistic corporate social responsibility initiatives seen in prior years, Fink’s push for sustainability was grounded both in environmental concerns and solid economics.
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A multibillion-pound bet on commercial property by local authorities is a “disaster waiting to happen”.
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TSB has joined a growing group of lenders offering low deposit mortgages in time-limited “fire sales”.
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Renters facing eviction have been offered a reprieve, but only if they live in lockdown areas.
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The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has given the UK’s top four residential developers six months to ‘get their leasehold houses in order’ or risk being taken to court, Property Week can reveal.
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JLL has begun a redundancy consultation process across its UK business and has confirmed that around 200 UK-based roles could be affected.
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St James’s Place and Columbia Threadneedle have become the first asset managers to unfreeze their property funds.
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London offices worth £5bn are for sale as the market enters a “key” few weeks.
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DWS expects the UK’s prime real estate values to fall by around 10% this year.
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The government’s exposure to the housing market through Help to Buy has made the sector “too big to fail”.
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The CBRE Monthly index reported an overall decline in commercial property value for August, with Industrial being the only individual sector reporting a growth.
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The Halifax house price index has reached a record high as the market continues to show immunity to job losses and gloomy forecasts.


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UK commercial property capital values sank -0.3% in August, while rental values declined -0.2%, CBRE has reported.
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Housing secretary Robert Jenrick has launched an £11.5bn affordable homes programme that will be used to build up to 180,000 homes for first-time buyers.
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Agents are reporting an “explosion” in the high-end of Scotland’s housing market
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The competition watchdog has warned four of the country’s biggest housebuilders that it could take them to court after it found evidence of unfair terms in contracts with homebuyers, and potential mis-selling
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The number of company voluntary arrangements (CVAs) so far this year already exceeds the total for last year as some insolvency experts say they have seen their “highest ever” number of CVA enquiries.
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The UK property market saw the highest number of exchanges since the end of 2019 last week, according to Knight Frank.
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Footfall at the UK’s retail locations in August improved by a 7.3 percentage points from July, but showed a 34.8% annual decline despite leisure reopenings.
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Sales of high-end homes have soared by 228% since last year.


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More sellers are finding a buyer within a week of putting their home up for sale than at any time in the past ten years.


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For the first time in nine years European investors have surpassed their counterparts from Asia Pacific to become the most active in London’s commercial property market.
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As communities and companies hope that recovery from the coronavirus pandemic may at last be on the way, the real estate industry and impact investing could play a critical role.
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On a balmy Friday in mid-August, down on the Thames by London’s Docklands, it is calm. You can count on one hand the number of barges that pass through Canary Wharf in a day.
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Many landlords were already jittery about the buy-to-let market before the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Cuts in tax relief, stamp duty surcharges, increased government red tape and political uncertainty all contributed towards a rise in residential property investors looking to exit the sector at the start of 2020.
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The purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) sector has become the latest property sector to embrace flexible leasing, with operators slashing lease lengths ahead of the new academic year.
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Occupier leasing in Central London tumbled by 57% across the second quarter of 2020, according to a new report from DeVono Cresa.
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COMMENT Crowdfunding has the potential to revolutionise the real estate market, but like any venture which engages the general public, many of whom may have limited experience of investing, it carries a certain amount of risk.
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Mortgage approvals have returned to pre-pandemic levels and consumer borrowing has picked up.
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Commercial property transactions in Ireland are anticipated to increase, with up to $1bn of assets expected to be brought to market over the coming months.
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Nearly one in four home purchases this year will be backed by the “bank of mum and dad”.
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Real estate investment trusts specialising in retail property have seen their shares plummet during the coronavirus pandemic.
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Demand for UK office workers is lagging behind other types of work.
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Pret a Manger will cut 2,890 jobs as it reshapes its business to fit the new world of work.
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The property industry is significantly more optimistic about the future than it was at the start of summer, reveals a new sentiment survey conducted by Property Week.
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As businesses ponder whether or not to bring their employees back to work, a wider debate about the longer-term plan for corporate office space is taking place: do companies stick with their traditional city HQ or shift to a hub-and-spoke model?
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Some of the UK’s biggest agency firms have delayed their 2020 graduate programmes until at least early in the new year as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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House prices will rise 3% this year, despite rising unemployment and the onset of recession.
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COMMENT How we will work in the future and what kind of offices we will inhabit is the source of much speculation. With concerns raised about social distancing in offices, demand for long-lease traditional workspaces has slumped – as has the popularity of co-working for largely the same reason
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Retail jobs are being cut at the fastest pace in a decade as the government starts to withdraw its job retention scheme.
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Homeowners in the commuter towns of the southeast are cashing in and moving on.
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COMMENT Earlier this year the Treasury published a narrowly focused consultation document which may turn out to have a favourable impact on some property fund structures based in the UK.
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Global real estate prices have begun to adjust as the impact of the pandemic becomes clearer, UBS Asset Management has said.
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Big supermarkets are back in fashion as bidding wars become common for large sites.
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Remote working could cause a spike in London office vacancy rates.
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Editor: It is not unprecedented for planning reforms to be part of the government’s economic stimulus package, but these have tended to focus on housing. Meanwhile, logistics, which last year contributed £124bn (gross value added) to the economy, and directly supported almost one million jobs, often gets sidelined.
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Some 23% of build to rent investors are considering whether to put plans for acquisitions on hold, following economic uncertainty in the wake of the pandemic.
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Investors and agents are readying for a rise in sale and leaseback transactions after the summer, as companies look to free up cash and prepare to move on after the coronavirus pandemic.
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Investors and agents are readying for a rise in sale and leaseback transactions after the summer, as companies look to free up cash and prepare to move on after the coronavirus pandemic.
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Retail warehouse vacancy rates have risen to 7.8% at the end of Q2 2020, up from 7.6% at the turn of the year, according to the latest research published by Trevor Wood Associates.
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Concerns are mounting as 230,000 renters face losing their homes when the residential eviction ban ends this weekend.
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COMMENT: In many ways, our parks and green spaces have never been more important. The entire country has undergone a reset, and the experience of lockdown has made us appreciate the value of outdoor public space like never before.
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Sales of supermarkets and offices boosted commercial property investment in July to around £2bn, according to Colliers International.
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Amazon has issued a strong rebuttal to those who argue that the pandemic has killed the office.
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London residential rents have dropped by 4.2%.
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The future of the controversial Tulip tower depends on a weeks-long public inquiry in November, as its backers hope to overturn a decision that prevented planning permission for the skyscraper.
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Office rents in London are predicted to plummet by as much as 40% over the next year-and-a-half.
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Average commercial lease lengths in the UK have fallen to 27.4 months in June, reflecting an 18-month low.
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The UK housing market has had its busiest month in more than a decade as sales top £37bn.
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The chief executive of Brookfield Asset Management has cast doubts on whether workforces will turn away from city centres and offices after the coronavirus pandemic passes.
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Footfall in the London’s West End is down 63% on 2019 levels.
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UK investment volumes remained subdued in July with £2bn transacted during the month, according to Savills.
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Footfall in London’s West End has ticked up in the last week on the back of the government announcement encouraging people back into the office.
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University operators are hoping for a much-needed bounce in leasing deals over the next few weeks as a fresh wave of students prepare to start courses on the back of today’s A-level results.
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The housing market is facing “boom then bust”, according to estate agents.
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EDITOR’S COMMENT: In tough times, perspective is valuable. So it was a pleasure to catch up with Simon Silver this week as he announced his retirement from Derwent – a company of which he was a director back when I was playing with action figures.
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Homes could soon become literal powerhouses.
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The average age of first-time buyers has barely moved in more than a decade.
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Jobs have been lost in the UK during lockdown at the fastest pace since the financial crisis a decade ago.
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Banks, local authorities and the government must do more to incentivise people over 65 to move into more suitable homes, according to retirement living operator Guild Living.
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Nearly 80% of apartment tenants in the US have made full or partial payments this month, but many are paying by credit card.
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Retailers are enjoying a second month of growing sales as customers slowly return to the high streets.
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The chancellor’s cut to stamp duty has prompted bidding wars and a major increase in first time buyers.
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Property trade bodies have rallied to urge the government to stump up £1.75bn to pay 50% of unpaid rents across the hardest hit sectors to avoid a “rent crisis”.
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The industrial sector has posted capital value growth after four months of decline but offices continue to stagnate, according to the latest CBRE monthly index.
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China is set to pass legislation that will allow it to sweep away home owners to make way for new developments.
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One in three UK companies is preparing to cut jobs by the end of September.
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The economy will officially enter recession this week.
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Office lettings in London dropped off 57% in the second quarter of this year compared to the previous quarter, according to research by DeVono Cresa.
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Investors are showing renewed appetite for UK residential REITs, according to new data from the European Public Real Estate Association (EPRA).
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Industry experts have criticised a regulatory proposal that would require investors to give six months’ notice before withdrawing their investments from open-ended property funds.
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The construction industry has recorded its strongest monthly rise in activity in nearly five years.
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If the global outbreak of Covid-19 has taught us anything, it’s that people need communities.
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Film and TV production studios are not usually viewed as a key focus for property investment, but the intensifying race for studio space after lockdown could signal their time to finally steal the spotlight.
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Investors are looking to put the breaks on pumping cash into proptech deals over the next 12 months, while start-ups are bracing themselves for a harder fundraising climate, new research shows.
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Just over a quarter of FTSE real estate companies have issued profit warnings during the first six months of the year, according to EY’s latest Profit Warnings Report.
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A new homes ombudsman with powers to fine or ban developers for substandard work is expected to come into force at the start of next year.
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The number of profit warnings issued by listed real estate companies rose fivefold in the first half of 2020 compared to last year, as Covid-19 forced investors and REITs to reassess their forecasts.
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Deteriorating relations between China and the UK have stoked fears that Chinese investors will pull the plug on UK property investment and office deals.

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COMMENT: The office sector is facing an “evolve or die” moment as it, like other sectors, faces unseen levels of disruption owing to the coronavirus pandemic.
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In recent months, the impact of Covid-19 has been acutely felt by the retail sector, an asset class that was already facing significant challenges before the global pandemic.
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Around 6,500 homes have been identified as at risk of closure in the next five years, equivalent to 140,000 beds, according to new research by Knight Frank.
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COMMENT Depending on your point of view, the present is either a challenging time for commercial real estate, or an exciting one. The entire sector has been upended, as the world questions if offices are even necessary anymore. On the other hand, this turbulence presents an opportunity for the sector to reinvent itself and delivers opportunities for growth that simply can’t be matched by working-from-home.
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The number of completed build to rent homes has grown 37% in the last year to some 47,754 homes.
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The UK’s senior living sector is expected to grow by 10% by 2025 with 800,000 units, according to Knight Frank.
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The number of build-to-rent homes that are complete, under construction or in planning has jumped 22% in the last year, according to new research from the British Property Federation (BPF).
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The ‘mini-boom’ in house sales prompted by the chancellors stamp duty cut might not be all it is cracked up to be.
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Housing secretary Robert Jenrick has awarded £900m to major sustainable housing and infrastructure projects.
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Investors in commercial property funds should have to wait six months to get their hands on cash.
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London risks losing its aura as a “fun” place to work, according to a senior economist.
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Two ex-Amazon heads of Europe are to lead Scannell International, a new European industrial real estate development company created by American industrial developer Scannell Properties.
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Landowners are cashing in on the Great Staycation by hastily throwing up holiday accommodation.
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The Financial Conduct Authority has launched a fresh consultation on open-ended property funds that could see investors forced to give up to six months’ notice to cash in units.
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The Covid-19 crisis has pushed up vacancy rates across Britain’s retail sector, with Greater London being the worst-affected region.
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Lloyds has predicted that house prices could fall by 10%, coupled with 20% falls in commercial values.
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Global markets retreated yesterday after the US and German officially entered recession.
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Shopping centre footfall is down 40% year on year – twice as much as retail park footfall, reveals exclusive data from property management firm Workman.
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Rent-free incentive periods in the London office market spiked in Q2 2020 and rents showed just a small drop on Q1 of 1%, according to EG’s panel of agency experts.
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Total city centre office take-up in Liverpool fell by 61% to 20,000 sq ft in Q2 as coronavirus slammed the breaks on transactions.
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Quarterly real estate transactions in Europe have plummeted to the lowest level in six years, as the Covid-19 pandemic put the brakes on investment.
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Commercial rents are expected to dive this year as the fallout from the pandemic takes its toll.
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Confidence in the UK’s office leasing market has wavered after signs of an uptick, according to Avison Young’s newly launched commercial real estate market activity index.
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Rents are set to plunge across the office and retail sectors in the short-term, according to a closely-followed survey released today by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
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Green shoots have started to show in the housing market, from an uptick in mortgage enquiries, renewed interest in certain properties such as houses with gardens, and big statements of confidence from major housebuilders such as Taylor Wimpey.
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A Hong Kong property tycoon wants to build a new city in Ireland to host 50,000 emigrants from the Chinese island.
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Retail sales have recovered at their highest rate in more than a year.
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The office market is going to become hospitality-focused in a post-pandemic world, chief executive and founder of Hubble Tushar Agarwal said at a panel event last week.
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A poll conducted by the City of London Corporation has revealed that 99% of global investors are still keen to invest in London, with 79% actively doing so.
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RICS has set up an independent evaluation service to help ease tensions between commercial landlords and tenants during Covid-19.
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COMMENT It’s not very often I say this, but the new permitted development rights for upwards extensions is a defining moment for the housebuilding industry. It is another step closer to making airspace development an asset class in its own right.
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Britain’s hospitality sector has suffered a “catastrophic” collapse in sales of almost £30bn in Q2.
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Ministers are drawing up plans to extend the Help to Buy scheme beyond its December deadline.
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Four out of five global investors are continuing to put money into or are planning new moves in London after the pandemic has subsided.
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An upcoming coronavirus-fuelled recession would wipe out £5.7bn from residential landlords’ rental earnings by 2024.
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A cross-party group of MPs has called on the government to boost social rented housing by an extra 90,000 homes a year with a £10bn annual grant.
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As enquiries for satellite office locations make a comeback, could we all end up working in local offices?
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High street casual dining chains have “no future” after coronavirus, according to former PizzaExpress boss Hugh Osmond.
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Housing market transactions should be back to normal soon according to Knight Frank.
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Do my eyes deceive me? Is that light I spy at the end of the tunnel? This week, there was cause for cautious optimism on several fronts.

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The pandemic has helped push a further 33,000 UK businesses into significant financial distress since the start of 2020, taking the total number of firms in financial trouble to a record 527,000.
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Green shoots are appearing in the purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) lending sector after a near-shutdown in the real estate debt market at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Three months ago, 30 flexible workspace operators wrote to chancellor Rishi Sunak begging for business rates relief and warning that hundreds of businesses would go under as a result of Covid-19 without help.
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This week’s edition takes a look at protecting our greatest assets, our natural assets, the beautiful spaces that we have in the UK. As lockdown restrictions continue to ease, more and more of us are getting out to some of the country’s most beautiful outdoor places – with most of real estate, it seems, heading to Devon and Cornwall from the conversations I’ve been having this week.
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Hongkongers unnerved by the new security law are looking to buy “cheap” UK properties.
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Cadogan and the Howard de Walden Estate have joined a growing list of major landlords to switch tenants to turnover-based rents in a bid to help them survive Covid-19.
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“How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly” is a quote from Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.
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Hundreds of jobs at the top property agencies have been put at risk in recent weeks, with JLL and Knight Frank the latest to join a growing list of firms eyeing job cuts to reshape their post-coronavirus businesses.
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Putting pound signs on the economic and social benefits that come from real estate is a tricky and delicate undertaking, but land management charity the Land Trust has not shied from giving it a shot.
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Total UK commercial property investment volume in Q2 2020 is likely to plummet by 72% compared with Q2 last year, making it the lowest quarter for investment on record.
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Shops should be allowed to shut and town centres should be turned into residential hubs, according to a new report.
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The government has postponed the business rates revaluation for two years to gain a wider review of the firms affected by Covid-19.
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COMMENT The recent Stamp Duty Land Tax cut can support the sales market, but with 4.5m UK households currently in rented accommodation, and with demand for rental homes predicted to rise to 7.2m households by 2025, it’s imperative that the UK private rented sector is also supported.
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In the third and final article in their lease series, Jennifer Ayris and Guy Whitehead look at how Covid-19 has affected the industrial sector.
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Property investors have suffered a £1.5bn shortfall in rental income due for the second quarter.
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The economy has recovered half of the output lost during lockdown.
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Comment: While most recent rent collection figures for many sectors have made for disappointing reading, at 63% for retail, 82% for logistics and 90% for offices, according to a Q2 2020 CBRE report, residential rental incomes have remained resilient, averaging 96%.
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House prices have been pushed to a record high after a loosening of mortgage terms and the chancellor’s stamp duty holiday.
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COMMENT The 2008 global financial crisis was credited with accelerating fintech and transforming the previously stagnant financial sector. Now, Covid-19 is set to do the same with proptech in commercial real estate, and the effects will be even more far reaching.
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COMMENT Over the past half decade we have seen a remarkable rise in environmental, social and governance criteria. The ESG investment market has an estimated $30tn (£24tn) in AUM, accounts for around one-third of all professionally managed assets around the world, and since 2015 more than 1,000 funds that focus on ESG investment principles have opened. Most now find themselves in uncharted territory as markets crash.
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Managed pub, bar and restaurant groups that had sites open in England in the first week after lockdown was lifted have reported collective like-for-like sales 39.8% down on the same week last year, according to the latest Coffer Peach Business Tracker
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There is a major imbalance between the number of senior living units needed and the number currently being delivered, according to exclusive data compiled by Irwin Mitchell and Knight Frank. The research also shows that while some local authorities appear to be getting to grips with the situation, others are lagging behind.
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Demand for data centres has heightened during the lockdown, with huge schemes set to transform industrial areas in London and the commuter belt.
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The stamp duty cut has seen a surge of interest in London’s commuter belt.
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There has been a sharp fall in UK real estate investment as a result of ‘a temporary lack of valuation transparency’ but experts say this has been partly mitigated by a significant increase in indirect investment through the public markets.
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Editor’s comment: So it seems that so far 2020 – from an investment point of view – hasn’t been that bad. European transactional figures, according to CBRE’s number crunchers, are only down by 2%, with €129bn (£117bn) traded.
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Successful property strategies are all about understanding customer needs and delivering best-in-class services that reflect those needs.
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Just 48% of retail rents have been collected since June rent quarter day, up from the 47% collected by retail landlords at the equivalent period in March, Property Week can reveal.
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The London investment market has been given a further post-lockdown lift through the sale of an Aldgate development site with permission for a 14-storey office.
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Calls on the government for a rent support scheme to stop a tidal wave of CVAs in the retail and hospitality sectors have intensified following the chancellor’s failure to include any rent relief measures in the summer statement.
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A plan to sell 15% of state-owned car parks could free up land for 110,000 homes.
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Commentary around the short-to-medium term future of the real estate sector does not make for comfortable reading. Headlines describing the desperate state of the retail market, casting doubt on the future of office space and speculating on the future of the hospitality industry are bleak. There is one clear exception – the build to rent sector. Having enjoyed gradual but sustained growth for a number of years, with a real acceleration in demand through 2019 and early 2020, BTR is proving to be an asset class in a class of its own. In a market challenged on almost all sides, could BTR be a much-needed glimmer of hope?
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COMMENT: Cities have existed since around 5000 BC, when the first were founded in what is now modern Iraq. Since then, mankind has been on a slow but steady journey of urbanisation – a trend that then exploded following the industrial revolution.
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The study of 3000 workers reveals that, while employees show a strong affinity for the office, they also desire the ability to have the option to work from home one to two days per week on average.
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A rise in real estate investment during June suggests the market is stabilising after the Covid-19 pandemic, according to analysts at Savills.
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Retail sales rose by 3.4% in June as shoppers slowly returned to the high street.
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Footfall on the UK’s high streets has remained at half last year’s levels since the lifting of lockdown.
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Total investment in UK real estate for the first half of this year plunged 16% when compared to total investment for the first half of 2019.
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London office leasing deals are hanging in the balance as ‘zombie occupiers’ rethink their space requirements in light of Covid-19.
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COMMENT: In this period of post-pandemic shock, there is a growing sense that our experience of Covid-19 must revolutionise something.
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House prices are expected to fall 5% this year and a further 10.6% in 2021
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Housebuilder share prices soared by an average of 18% between April and June as the stock market showed renewed confidence in the sector as the lockdown lull ends.
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CBRE has started redundancies across its UK advisory business as part of a restructure of the business in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Investment in the emerging build-to-rent sector in the second quarter of 2020 fell the lowest level on record, with just £83m committed in two deals.
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The number of homes for sale has stayed close to record lows despite a recovery in demand.
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Housing associations Notting Hill Genesis and A2Dominion have put three development blocks up for sale for more than £180m, as the shared ownership market flounders.
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Covid-19 has delayed the recovery of the prime central London residential market to 2021, according to new research from Savills.
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Occupier take-up of grade A logistics floorspace in the first half of 2020 was in line with the same period last year, according to research from JLL.
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The chancellor’s stamp duty cuts are more likely to benefit buy-to-let landlords and second home hunters than first time buyers.
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Turnover-based rents in the retail and leisure sector are not new. But judging by media coverage in recent weeks, suddenly they seem to be everyone’s favourite route forward for the post-coronavirus world.
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The UK’s residential market is missing out on billions of pounds of potential investment because of a lack of suitable investable vehicles.
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Capital values across the UK’s commercial property sectors weakened by 3.8% during the second quarter, after dipping by 0.7% in June.
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Take-up has hit a record level for industrial and logistics spaces measuring more than 100,000 sq ft during H1 this year, according to new research from Savills.
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Lockdown has seen plans for data centres explode, with the number of applications for new data centres during this period surpassing 2019 figures.
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Spending has increased threefold with the reopening of pubs and restaurants, but is still half of last year’s “normal” levels.
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COMMENT Less than a month ago, I had the pleasure of being on the panel of a webinar organised by Knight Frank and IPSX which debated the question: “Is now the right time to re-enter the real estate investment market?”
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Accountancy’s Big Four have been given just four years to seal off their audit practices.
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Hammerson and Shaftesbury were among the biggest REIT fallers on the FTSE 250 today, as the stock exchange’s resurgence this week showed signs of easing.
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The National Trust is calling for 600 new “street parks”, filled with fruit trees, to be created in the “grey deserts” of Britain’s cities.
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Savills’ latest research report has ranked London as the most resilient investment market during Covid-19.
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The construction sector rebounded in June on the back of renewed housebuilding.
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The chancellor has drawn up plans to exempt most homebuyers from paying any stamp duty to help kick-start the Covid ravaged economy.
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Retailers will surely have been relieved to see shoppers return after lockdown restrictions were eased. It’s still too early to fully understand what damage three months of trading exclusively online (if at all) has caused — and, despite the crowds, many are fearful about how the rest of the year will shape up.
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Britain’s economy is regaining momentum as the lockdown is lifted, according to real-time data.
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Commercial occupiers in the UK have now paid 46% of June quarterly rents owed, up from 18.2% a week ago.
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Leading retail landlords have to date collected less rent following the June quarter day than they did at the March quarter day, with experts warning that negotiations between property owners and tenants are vital to prevent a similar situation in September.
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House prices suffered their first annual fall in eight years as the lockdown brought activity to a standstill.
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Hammerson’s near-8% share price increase today took it almost to the top of the FTSE 250 risers – it ended second only to security services company G4S, which was up by 9.2%.
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I want to go against the current – and surprising – trend among some property industry experts for extolling the virtues of working from home and sounding the death knell of the office.
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Hammerson and Capital & Regional were two of the biggest fallers among the listed REITs today, as shopping centre landlord intu’s collapse continues to reverberate throughout the retail sector.
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The yield gap between prime industrial and shopping centre yields in mainland Europe has closed for the first time, according to new data from Savills.
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Over the past few months, Covid-19 has taken the world by storm with one of the sharpest supply-side economic shocks ever witnessed in modern times.
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The world’s tallest hybrid timber tower could soon sprout above Sydney.
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Less than 20% of commercial rents in the UK were collected by landlords on June quarter day, according to initial data that suggests a stark slump in tenants paying their bills during the Covid-19 downturn.
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Institutional property investment in the UK has historically given residential a wide berth.
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Vacant shops will be used as walk-in Covid testing centres.
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LISTEN With more than 150,000 build-to-rent homes now occupied, under construction or in planning, activity in the sector is fast catching up with the attention it has long drawn from developers, advisers, investors and lenders. But one voice too often missing from debate and discussion is that of the renter. What are their concerns and aspirations? And are they happy with the product they are paying for?
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Brexit is once again starting to rise up the agendas of real estate investors after being pushed to the sidelines by Covid-19, according to new research from UBS.
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Demand for London’s skyscrapers could slump after the pandemic as big business moves away from big offices.
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The UK residential property market has experienced a surge in activity since lockdown restrictions were eased, with offers accepted in the UK in the week ending 20 June reaching a record number.
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Almost £3bn of commercial real estate assets have been pulled from the UK market since the start of the year.
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Britain should invest in small “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects to boost the economy.
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The ban on the mass-marketing of minibonds will be permanent.
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Research from the British Retail Consortium reveals a high street vacancy rate of 12.3% in March 2020. With several major retailers falling into administration during lockdown, the figures for June are likely to be much higher.
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COMMENT Estate agents and removal firms have returned to work under the government’s plans to reinvigorate the housing market. This offers a glimmer of hope, but how will the market look when the Covid crisis abates and the economy reboots?
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While Covid-19 at its core is a public health crisis, there is no doubt that the resulting global pandemic and economic fallout has left the real estate industry with much to ponder.
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Companies are likely to stick with their traditional city centre offices once the coronavirus pandemic passes, according to the team at real estate investment house Mayfair Capital – even if staff spend less time in them.
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Private rents have reached record highs during the lockdown.
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Britain’s economy will shrink by 8% this year, but it should rebound faster than expected.
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The housing market is emerging strongly form lockdown as asking prices rise 2% higher than March.
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Morgan Stanley is still holding out for a v-shaped recovery.
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The government should look at creating pension superfunds to invest in major infrastructure projects.
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COMMENT In history, 2020 will be remembered as the year that brought in a decade of transition in a matter of weeks. This year we’ve been questioning everything from the state of our health and our economies to our societies and social structures. The questions about proptech’s future were already trending in 2019 after WeWork’s dismal performance. Is proptech still a good investment?
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Footfall across the UK’s retail locations plunged by 81.6% in May owing to the Covid-19 lockdown – a shallower decline than the previous month.
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Office space requirements in the UK could drop by up to 50% post-lockdown as occupiers begin to ramp up their permanent flexible working offerings, a report by Instant Offices shows.
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London’s office market looks set to have had a dismal second quarter of take-up, but agents hope that a number of active big-ticket requirements will kick-start the market again heading into the second half and beyond.
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Britain’s biggest retirement living housebuilder McCarthy & Stone has had the unenviable task of trying to protect thousands of residents living in the company’s 441 retirement communities across the UK from Covid-19.
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Bank lending to small medium enterprises (SMEs) in construction dropped 26% year on year for the month of April, according to accountancy group UHY Hacker Youn
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Britain’s hotel owners have been among the worst-hit real estate victims in the Covid-19 crisis. Now, after more than two months of lockdown, many are planning their reopening strategies and hoping business will bounce back quickly
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A new bill set to pass through the House of Lords tomorrow will further weaken the position of commercial landlords during the coronavirus crisis, claims accountancy group Moore.
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Knight Frank’s usually-bustling Baker Street headquarters was eerily quiet at the end of March, as Britain entered lockdown and employees started to work from home. Just a handful of staff were still left in the building.
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Demand for industrial and logistics space continues to grow apace as occupiers line up to take large, long-term leases across the country despite, or sometimes because of, the coronavirus pandemic.
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The chief executive of one of the UK’s largest property companies has warned that demand for secondary office stock will plummet as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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COMMENT The world we live in has changed. There are now more of us than ever before, with many having only known a digital age where 24/7 connectivity is a given. Technology permeates into every aspect of our lives.
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UK property fund returns hit their lowest level in 11 years during the quarter to the end of March, according to the MSCI/AREF UK Quarterly Property Fund Index.
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Asset managers raised more than €200bn (£175bn) in 2019 to invest in real estate – up 24% on the amount raised in 2018.
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Real estate must prepare for its most painful recession yet, with the International Monetary Fund warning that the global economy is entering the worst downturn since the Great Depression.
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The UK hospitality sector could be facing a “bloodbath” unless urgent action is taken to support struggling businesses through the Covid-19 pandemic, advisers and operators have warned.
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Social distancing has thrown the whole concept of co-living into question.
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A survey of real estate lenders conducted at the end of January showed that very few foresaw the potential impact of the coronavirus outbreak.
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The full extent of the shortfall in rent received by landlords as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic became clear this week.
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Intu has threatened to serve ’statutory demands’ to some tenants that have refused to pay their quarterly rent.
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Retirement living operators are calling on the government to classify any move into retirement housing as a ‘critical home move’ as sales and lettings in the sector dwindle to nothing following the government’s advice last week to put all but critical moves on hold.
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SoftBank has walked away from buying $3bn (£2.4bn) of WeWork stock.
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The heads of more than 30 flexible workspace businesses have written to chancellor Rishi Sunak warning “hundreds” of operators could go under because of declining membership in light of the Covid-19 outbreak.
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Cognitive buildings are increasingly commonplace thanks to the development of technologies that are delivering greater levels of operational control.
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The Covid-19 outbreak will drive over 5m sq ft of industrial and logistics requirements, according to Lambert Smith Hampton’s (LSH’s) latest industrial and logistics report.
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Two property funds have become the first to “gate” as a result of the wild market swings caused by the coronavirus epidemic.
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When the West Midlands town of Bromsgrove was ranked the 7th best place to start a company in the UK in 2019, eyebrows were raised. Ranking above major cities including Edinburgh, experts quickly warned that “zombie companies” could have artificially inflated the results of Companies House data compiled by The Centre for Entrepreneurs research. But the horse had well and truly bolted. Headlines such as ‘welcome to Bromsgrove, the start-up hub’ were already out there and so a movement began. A movement that sparked a fresh focus on the UK’s most techy towns. Here are five of Britain’s most unexpected tech hubs that prove you don’t need to live and work in a major city to be part of the digital revolution.
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Coronavirus could end up having a much bigger impact on the property industry than just the postponement of Mipim.
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Noteholders in a CMBS dating back to before the financial crisis have cut their losses and agreed to a £120m sale of the underlying properties.
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Knight Frank, Grosvenor and Landsec are among the major firms pulling out of this year’s MIPIM conference, in response to the growing number of global coronavirus cases.
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The UK is leading proptech investment into Europe and has attracted five times more investment than Germany, according to a new report by the University of Oxford.
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The value of prime central London residential development land fell by 2% last year.
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Investment in the UK’s build-to-rent sector fell to €5.9bn (£4.95bn) in 2019, down by 14% on the previous year, as investors held off amid political uncertainty.
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The number of private landlords has hit a seven-year low with 222,570 leaving the sector as the government cuts tax reliefs and increases the regulatory burden.
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The number of short-term residential lettings in London has surged fourfold to 80,770 homes, up from 18,440 in April 2015.
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If your only experience of hostels is creaking beds, grubby bathrooms, ramshackle common spaces and hungover reception staff, then you are seriously behind the times.
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“We’re now going to sealed bids on houses that we couldn’t get a single viewing for a few months ago.” This view from a south London estate agent is no flash in the pan. After many months in the deep freeze, the capital’s housing market seems to have thawed.
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Last year saw the second highest level of student accommodation investment on record, with transactions reaching a total of £5.2bn.
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Investment in the UK hotel sector in 2019 reached £6bn, an increase of 26%, according to the report ‘UK Hotel Capital Markets: Investment Review 2020’, published by Knight Frank.
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Co-living has grown up and moved out of London – and a flurry of applications from developers across the country make efforts in the capital seem tame.
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The largest real estate transaction using blockchain currency has been made, with investor BrickMark purchasing an office in Zurich, Switzerland, for CHF 130m (£103m).
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Commercial real estate investment volumes in the UK dropped by 19% in 2019, reflecting investor caution amid political uncertainty.
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Cheung Chung-kiu in process of buying 45-room property overlooking Hyde Park
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Europe is likely to attract a sizeable chunk of almost €100bn of new money ploughed into real estate in 2020 – a year in which investors are set to move up the risk curve in their ongoing hunt for returns.
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Withdrawals from property funds fell sharply following the Conservative Party’s decisive victory in the general election last month.
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Investment from South Korea into Europe is expected to slow down in the first quarter of 2020 after it grew by 122% year-on-year in 2019 to €12.5bn (£10.6bn).
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Investment into London hotels could reach around £1.5bn in the first quarter of 2020, according to research from Savills.
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It was the sector that could do no wrong. Not any longer. Last week, Property Week broke the news that flexible workspace providers Campfire and Prospect Business Centres had closed sites in London due to fierce competition.
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The end of Help to Buy is fast approaching. It feels symbolic, reflecting the UK population’s shifting attitudes away from an occupier-owner model to that of private renter. From 18-year-olds heading to university through to retirees looking to downsize, the UK residential landscape is undergoing seismic change.
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UK house prices have fallen as sellers hold back ahead of the December 12 election.
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Two years since the introduction of permitted development rights (PDR), aimed at making it quicker and easier to convert light industrial units (class B1[C]) of less than 500 sq m (5,382 sq ft) into residential units (class C3), the scheme has not had anywhere near the take-up the government was hoping for.
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Student accommodation in Leeds had the highest annual rental growth among regional university cities during the academic year 2019/20, according to Knight Frank.
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The real estate’s confidence in investor and developer finance from overseas has plummeted in the last six months in the face of global economic and political uncertainty.


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Blackfriars Road in Southwark has joined the ranks of Mayfair and Chelsea by recording more £5m-plus sales than any other address in the country.
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The real estate industry is making slow progress in adopting enterprise-wide proptech strategies, according to the findings of KPMG’s third PropTech report
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Labour’s plans to introduce a right to buy scheme for private sector landlords would obliterate the PRS sector, the Residential Landlords Association (RLA) has warned.
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It’s an exciting time to be in commercial real estate. Emerging technologies that leverage data, analytics and insights are beginning to transform the industry. In fact, now is a great time to be adopting the latest evolution of machine learning and AI, since it has already been battle-tested by other industries.
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London’s build-to-rent (BTR) market has taken a pause for breath. Both the number of sales to BTR investors and the number of schemes starting on site have fallen in recent months, according to data published by Molior London earlier this month.
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Investment into commercial real estate in the UK during the first half of this year was at its lowest in almost a decade – £19.7bn compared with £28.9bn a year ago, and 4% below the long-term average.
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When CBRE announced its acquisition bid for Telford Homes, it took the industry by surprise. Few expected the world’s largest agent to acquire a London residential developer at this point in the cycle. But, in reality, CBRE’s £267.4m investment is a reflection of how US capital is being increasingly drawn to the UK’s expanding build-to-rent market in new and different ways.
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Average all-property prime yields hit 4.9% in July, the highest level since November 2016, according to research conducted by Savills.
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Shares in the UK’s biggest REITs took a tumble yesterday after weak interim results from intu sparked a sell-off.
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Investment in London’s build-to-rent (BTR) sector rose 85% last year pushing it up two places to become the fourth best performing in Europe, according to JLL’s new European Multifamily Report.
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Central London office investment is set to drop by almost 40% year on year for the first half of 2019, according to JLL.
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The average property prime yield remained stable at 4.87% in June 2019, according to real estate advisor Savills.
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The next major end-of-cycle crash in commercial property values will almost certainly not happen for some time. But if I am wrong and the crash is imminent, the way the market is behaving is very definitely different this time.
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Westminster City Council has invoked “Article 4” powers to ban permitted development right schemes.
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Net additions to London’s housing stock fell by 20% last year following a sharp fall in office-to-residential conversions, according to Knight Frank.
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Fourfront, Loop, Coriolis, ThirdWay and Oakley have agreed to pay £7m in fines after admitting their involvement in a cartel.
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COMMENT: “Friday’s good, but Monday’s better,” is a favourite saying of John Burns.
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Central London is still the world’s leading destination for commercial real estate investment, with £16.2bn invested last year, according to Knight Frank.
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Since the global financial crisis, Britain’s GDP has lagged perilously behind that of the other G7 economies. Despite working more hours than the US, Germany and France, Britain falls significantly short when compared with their productivity levels. Brexit aside, I believe this is our biggest issue as a country.
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Fundraising is down, but debt remains a ‘great place to hide out’
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COMMENT Making predictions is never easy; doing so in 2019 looks like a mug’s game. While you write your own punchline to that, I’ll have a go. My only advantage is that I’m doing so from the 18th floor of 22 Bishopsgate, EC2. The view of London is extensive, with sight of the issues that will affect real estate in 2019 nationally.
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New images of what the City of London cluster will look like in 2026 have been released by the City of London Corporation as consultations on two major plans for the area come close to finishing.
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UK investors have been tempted back to the London office investment market in 2018 during a relatively stable year for commercial property, despite Brexit uncertainty.
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A trio of senior figures at BNP Paribas Real Estate have left the business as part of a round of redundancies.
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Looking to the next decade of real estate financing, a number of factors are on the minds of lenders and borrowers including the rise in the volume of debt finance and the impact that technology may play.
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Shares in housebuilders fell dramatically this morning as Taylor Wimpey, Berkeley Group, Barratt Developments and Persimmon all saw loses of nearly 10% in morning trading as the UK was thrown into political turmoil over Brexit.
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Completed London office space hit its highest level since 2004 between April and September this year in a period which also saw new construction starts rise by almost a quarter on the previous six months.
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FUTURE OF LONDON “Foreign capital has never gone away. We just advised on the sale of 125 Old Broad Street, next to the Bank of England, for £385m to Singapore-listed City Developments.”
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You will be forgiven if during the process of reading this you have an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, as London office market activity between July and September showed some strikingly similar statistical patterns to last quarter’s figures.
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Almacantar has disinstructed the sales agents for its flats at its iconic luxury residential Centre Point development as the offers currently being made are “detached from reality”.
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No deals were recorded in the UK real estate market by mainland Chinese investors in the third quarter – the first time since Q2 2015.
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For any transaction to be successful, trust is vital. From marriage vows to rental agreements, employment contracts to doctor-patient confidentiality, trust is the foundation stone upon which we build our personal and professional relationships.
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Average property yields have fallen to their lowest point in more than a decade, according to Lambert Smith Hampton’s Q2 UK Investment Transactions report.
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Prime London residential prices fell by 3% in Q1 2018 while the average discount to asking price was 12.1%, according to new research from Coutts.
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Saudi Arabia is on the brink of an unparalleled upsurge in its overseas investment activity and real estate is set to be a major beneficiary.
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South East office investment grew 22.3% to £559m in the first quarter of 2018, compared to the same period last year, and was 73% up on the 10-year first quarter average, according to new research from BNP Paribas Real Estate.
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The private rented sector must undergo radical reforms to make it fit for millennials who face a lifetime of renting, according to a report by Resolution Foundation.
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Take-up of office space across central London totalled 2.3m sq ft in the first quarter of 2018, according to JLL – a 14% rise year-on-year.
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The total number of build-to-rent homes completed, under construction and in planning across the UK has increased by 30% in the past year.
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