Peter Bill
@peterproperty
Followers
13,301
Following
0
Media
2,548
Statuses
15,651
Author: Broken Homes (2020) Planet Property (2014) Editor: Building (1990-6) Estates Gazette (1998-2009) Columnist: Evening Standard (08-15) Property Week (17-
London, England
Joined May 2011
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
Happy Pride Month
• 346207 Tweets
Real Madrid
• 205221 Tweets
Dortmund
• 113448 Tweets
Happy New Month
• 84852 Tweets
#withMUSIC
• 56453 Tweets
鳴尾記念
• 45825 Tweets
スタメン
• 34677 Tweets
安田記念
• 27072 Tweets
#cgUT_東京夜
• 21997 Tweets
ウレーニャ
• 17519 Tweets
稲葉さん
• 15900 Tweets
BILLYBABE BETTER BALM
• 15303 Tweets
#MUSICFAIR
• 14742 Tweets
フルイド
• 14677 Tweets
ヨーホーレイク
• 14354 Tweets
デンタルワイパー
• 11860 Tweets
横浜優勝
• 11218 Tweets
サヨナラ負け
• 10888 Tweets
Last night at St George’s Hanover Square, then at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, £870,000 was raised by the property sector Story of Christmas service and reception. Readers included; Chris Martin of Coldplay, Benedict Cumberbatch, Celia Imrie and Game of Throne’s Kit Harington.
12
107
341
This Section 20 Notice from Hyde Group telling leaseholders of the Bolanachi building in Bermondsey they each face a £26,000 bill for re-cladding the 138 flats must feel like a smack in the face: and raises the question as to why Hyde think they need £336k to manage the process.
25
118
187
Sign of the times: Canary Wharf to turn one whole level of car parking into a Go-Kart track.
1
55
172
PW (£) “Peppercorn ground rent cap ‘disastrous’ for investors, experts tell DLUHC. Professional freeholders said that without an income stream from ground rent, they will be forced to exit the market.” Few hearts will bleed.
45
45
168
Labour-controlled Westminster City council will now measure the success of its housing policy by reductions in the waiting list. If only all councils did the same, rather than targeting ‘affordable’ housing completions - which almost nobody on the waiting list can afford.
13
64
153
I’d heard of zero-carbon…but Blackstone-owned St Modwen has build a couple of carbon-negative 3-bed trial homes at it’s ‘Healthy Wood’ site at Copthorne, near Gatwick, which deliver a 125% reduction in C02 emissions and 79% reduction in energy bills.
11
18
125
Property Week: Clive Betts, chair of the parliamentary housing committee, said the loan scheme were “a mess”. “We grilled (Lord Greenhalgh) pretty hard on the loans scheme. I was less clear about it after he’d spoken to us than I was before.”
6
66
123
Barratt take £56.3m profit hit, mostly on remediating the Cityscape block of 95 flats in Croydon, built in 2005. The block has been reclad and the concrete frame strengthened. Barratt pledged no costs will fall on leaseholders. Be good to see others doing the right thing.
6
30
106
Movers & Shakers event I am chairing on Friday 26 starring Tony Pidgley, John Burns of Derwent and three young entrepreneurs, is to switch away from the Dorchester as a protest against the Sultan of Brunei’s gay death penalty law. Bravo.
4
14
101
Telegraph (£) “Ministers should be using state-owned land to build low-cost council housing. Housing subsidies must be diverted “from benefits to bricks””. Yes, this is in the Telegraph, not the Guardian. And, yes, Liam Halligan is inescapably correct.
9
50
101
Major investigation by FT into Ballymore’s service charges: One resident, who bought his flat in Embassy Gardens in 2015, said his charge had increased 58% to over £6,500. It just feels like I am a cash cow in my own home.” via
@financialtimes
5
52
102
Sky News: Labour leader Kier Starmer calls on government to “get a grip” on cladding crisis by setting up national task force to carry out urgent audit.
4
42
99
Mail: Very good picture story bringing together latest images courtesy of New London Architecture of towers either under construction or proposed.
via
@MailOnline
20
26
98
BBC Panorama: worth a watch: If only to see how a landlord squeezed six tenants into a (terraced) former council home and collected over £900 a month in housing benefit for each of them. Thanks to Right to Buy.
12
59
98
An good set of points made by lawyers, Irwin Mitchell, asking the Chancellor to settle the cladding crisis. The most interesting being the view of the president of the Law Society, saying the right to sue being given to leaseholders is “worthless”
5
46
96
Telegraph (£) “….one estate agent estimated that many of the buildings only have occupancy rates of around 25-30pc, as the sites are unattractive to full-time residents. “Of the limited number of current residents, many of them are students,” he said.”
7
63
89
Guardian: Yet another awful tale trapped leaseholders: this one with new twist: Owner with 86 years left on lease has flat valued at zero by mortgage lender, due to cladding issues. But for purposes of lease extension, freeholder values flat at £375, 000.
6
57
91
Mail: ‘They bought the properties in good faith, many of them using Government schemes like help to buy,’ Mr Spencer said. ‘The flats were built under Government regulations, which have turned out not to be up to scratch.’
3
57
92
Guardian: “Woking, with an annual council tax take of £11m, is paying £62m a year to service £1.8bn in loans on assets worth £600m less than what was paid for them.”
15
41
89
DT (£) ‘Britain would be better off with fewer buy-to-let landlords, says L&G’s Bill Hughes who is calling for a radical overhaul of the UK rental sector as he argues that too many buy-to-let landlords have been “suboptimal and substandard”.
20
29
85
Gov update: “Each developer will be expected shortly to sign a legally binding contract and inform leaseholders how they will be meeting their commitments. We have initiated discussions with further developers..” Gove may have gone, but Clark marches on.
9
45
84
Sunday Times (£) Major article on cladding scandal with gallery of those faced with huge bills (which the gov says are inflated) and stats showing how flat sales are falling.
4
42
83
Property Week: My story today on JLL saying no thanks to continuing to manage the ten hotels in the £2 billion Dorchester Group portfolio for the Sultan of Brunei. JLL refused to say anything beyond no comment. So, I will: “well done.”
5
29
81
Michael Gove re-appointed Secretary of State at the Department of Levelling Up. A move that will not please house builders.
13
16
82
Times (£) “Working from home is all very well for those who have sunlit home offices with a spouse to have a companionable sandwich with at lunchtime, but what of those in flat shares with four others? “ Get Back to the Office (GBO?) sentiment is rising.
9
30
79
Cladding crisis: Stephen McPartland MP on World at One. “They (MHCLG) have never had a grip on this issue. There are 11 million people caught in this trap. There is serious incompetence at MHCLG. Number 10 needs to get involved.”
2
40
79
BD (£) .Berkeley has said it will no longer focus on tower schemes and build more low-rise developments in future if the government’s proposed ban on single staircases in blocks above 30m goes ahead.” Every cloud…
12
49
77
FT leader (£) “One point is clear: the burden should not fall on leaseholders, who through no fault of their own now face bills that in some cases are akin to a second mortgage.”
via
@financialtimes
1
31
78
ST (£) “If you are paying for burly men to patrol the corridors of your building 24 hours a day, then there is absolutely no chance of a fire taking hold. Which means the cost of fire insurance should be zero.” Sometimes Jeremy Clarkson makes a good point.
3
27
76
Bloomberg: “The cheese-grater required emissions of 92,210 tons of carbon said in a report citing data from the building’s developer, British Land. That’s about the same as the annual emissions of 20,000 cars. About 60% of that came from steel and cement.”
9
54
74
Campaigner and journalist Harry Scoffin sets up lobby group Commonhold Now to call for leasehold to be replaced by Commonhold as the default tenure for flats. Push comes ahead of yet-to-be-granted government promise to reform law for existing leaseholders.
5
53
71
FT (£) “In a ruling on Thursday, Mulalley & Co, an Essex-based contractor, was ordered to pay damages towards the cost of removing cladding it had fitted to four residential tower blocks in Gosport.’
3
47
74
Times (£) Berkeley boss Rob Perrins warns home building will halve to 100,000: suggests permissions drying up. (So, falling sales must be a good thing? ) Journalist omits fact that Berkeley has 51 sites with permission for 42,700 units - 10 years supply.
6
55
75
My PW column today: While the planning ‘process’ needs improvement, the idea this will magically result in more homes is both economically and politically preposterous.
7
31
73
New levelling up Sec, Simon Clarke, ticks off insurers for ripping off those trapped in ‘grenfell’ flats for block insurance profiteering and demands they set up ‘pool’ insurance to reduce costs. Hooray.
5
39
71
Michael Gove ‘outraged’ by Financial Conduct Authority finding that broker commissions for insuring blocks have flats has risen 40% in past three years. Resolve ‘strengthened” to ban hidden commissions. Go Gove. Been a money for nothing scam for decades. See next tweet.
9
30
69
Homes England loans British Land £100m that will be used to pay for roads and infrastructure on 53-acre Canada Water site in Southwark where 3,000 homes are due to be built. I’m scratching my head, wondering why State finance is needed? Will it make the homes cheaper?
11
21
68
Foxtons say the average letting price for their rental properties has reached its highest-ever level in London of £533 per week, driven up by 29 would-be renters chasing each property as it comes on the market.
3
30
67
ST (£) “With only nine flats, the fire risk was “minuscule”, making the recommended works “over the top”. Fire inspectors are scared of being held responsible for fires. Easing guidance + a gov pledge to pay for any actual fires would free trapped owners.
4
27
68
FT (£) THIS is the housing crisis: the lack of affordable homes, “Fixing Planning” so 300,000 homes can be built is an utter irrelevance beside the real crisis.
8
34
67
Updated Help to Buy figures: £20bn of loans advanced against 328,500 homes valued at £91m. Nothing wrong with the overall LTV. But just short of 60,000 are flats. Good question for MP to ask: How many of these flats are currently worthless, due to defective cladding?
3
36
68
S Tel (£) Redrow boss: “The only way you can improve affordability is to increase supply.” Self-interested nonsense. Adding 300,000 beans a year instead of 250,000 to a mountain of 24 million beans hardly tempers prices. Bean demand is the price modifier.
22
27
67
Light show held at Battersea Power Station last night to celebrate handing over of keys to owner of first flat within the station. Hinting at the decades-long development struggle, boss Simon Murphy said “we can confidently say the Everest of Real Estate has finally been scaled.’
33
14
67
BBC: “UK Finance, which represents the banking industry, said until RICS guidance and the government's official advice is updated "lenders will continue to be guided by surveyors' expert opinions when a EWS1 form is required.” Fingers out, RICS.
5
29
65
Welcome to the world of Permitted Development Rights. A break-your-heart picture of a child’s trampoline wedged in the apron between a block of flats and the A-road. Flats that used to be offices.
7
41
65
Battersea Power Station releases a couple ‘sneak peek’ shots of the inside of the building.
4
9
66
Building: “London developer Ballymore has been forced to act after online ratings site Trustpilot had to warn it to stop its own staff from posting positive reviews of the firm.”
6
28
65
Housing Today (£) Barnet joins growing list of councils bulk buying homes from developers afraid they won’t be able to sell them in deteriorating market. Questions: At what discount to open market value? What percentage will be leased at ‘social’ rent?
14
43
65
FT (£) Leasehold: ‘this dysfunctional form of tenure, which privileges developers over residents, coupled with a build-cheaply-and-charge-exorbitantly approach to high-rise development paint a damning picture of the English approach to dense housing.”
2
24
62
Times (£) There is one brutal way to get a builder to make good defects: do what they do to their subcontractors, hold back 5% until faults remedied. How? Using the NHBC as arbiter and escrow bank. Will this happen? Only when bricks grow wings.
7
23
61
DT (£) “Britain’s ratio of construction costs to property value is more than double the ratio in America and 26pc higher than France..This suggests that the UK has the most extreme relative value attached to land of any major economy.” Interesting read.
10
26
60
FT Editorial Board: “Leasehold has become an inappropriate contract for modern Britain”. via
@financialtimes
4
35
58
New York Times (£) A superb article on how to convert office blocks from various eras into apartments (the older, the easier) complete with multiple floor plans and axonometric projections. Required reading for anyone contemplating a conversion in the UK.
2
20
57
Daily Mail: “When former London Mayor Boris Johnson launched what was named the Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea 'opportunity area', he described it as 'the final piece in the jigsaw' of central London.” And now, by far the ugliest.
0
20
58
Insurance Business: ‘these absolutely egregious commissions that have surfaced in your market study have been going on under nose of the FCA for, presumably, the entire lifetime of your organisation.” Indeed so…much more than a decade..
9
46
58
Times (£) “A government source said: “The public will question why a large freeholder owned by a multimillionaire Italian count is selling off buildings to a company in an opaque overseas tax haven . . .” Mike the Merciless pursues Count Luca to Wyoming.
3
38
58
Whitehall gossip: Queen’ Speech hazy promise that the ‘government remains committed’ to Leasehold Reform is raising fear and fury among those who feel Number 10 has scotched plans to allow 2m existing leaseholders to enfranchise, previously timetabled for this Session.
9
31
57
Five-star report from Savills, with evidence showing new home sales falling by 50,000 a year to 90,000. Deadly combination of fewer sales outlets and fewer sales per outlet. Disagree with diagnosis (blame planners, not developers) but first-class analysis.
1
18
57
Cadogan (93 acres of Chelsea and Kensington) announces plans to have 500 ‘al fresco’ seats ‘spilling out across newly pedestrianised Pavilion Road” from April 12th. Food market at Duke of York Square (below) to open again on April 3rd.
5
11
57
ST (£) “All 66 tall buildings have been caught up in the scandal exposed by the Grenfell fire. For more than 18 months, residents have been in limbo, waiting for detailed façade inspections costing £2 million.” Big story, buried in Homes section.
0
37
58
Peabody launch ‘trio of new developments” in Wandsworth, at St John’s Way, New Mansion Square and Willow Walk. Eligible buyers can, for example, buy a 25% share in 2-bed flats valued between £580,000 - £630,000. Is this REALLY what Peabody should be about? Marketing guff below.
13
27
57
FT (£) “WhatsApp to Stephen: No, no, that’s a common misunderstanding. Housebuilders don’t want to build more homes. They don’t exist to build houses. They exist to sell houses — at healthy margins.” Scathingly funny and accurate skit on house builders.
4
26
57
FT (£) “The largest portfolio to be withdrawn in recent weeks consisted of 16 warehouses spread around England, which private equity firm KKR and logistics investor Mirastar had been hoping to sell for more than £800mn.” Long sobering read.
4
26
57
Gove appoints leasehold rights campaigner, Martin Boyd, as chair of Government-run Leasehold Advisory Service, sending a signal that a body once a semi-captive to freeholder interests will fully back coming reforms.
3
20
54
Times (£) “The former Treasurer of the Conservative Party has been accused of greed after leaseholders in a development he owns were being charged 67 per cent commission on their buildings insurance.” For doing what?
3
36
51
Standard: this fire at already contentious Ballymore block is going to raise the pressure on government to do more for leaseholders trapped in unsellable flats. The tenants are already up in arms at the high service charges imposed by Ballymore.
2
37
55
What the HS2 money was spent: “Analysis of the payments data shows HS2 spent £351 million on management consultants since 2012, including £100 million with the specialist cost consultancy Turner & Townsend.” Hang on? Surely T&T’s job was to control costs?
5
35
54
Sky: Good piece on scandal. One small fix could at least stop the insurance industry creaming hundreds of millions in block insurance premiums, which in the case of one leaseholder had jumped from £350 to £1,800: the state assumes the fire risk.
0
28
55
Times Leader: “ 58 per cent of properties bought under Help to Buy went to purchasers with a household income greater than £50,000....a fifth were bought by people who had previously owned a property.” How the hell does that happen will be the question.
11
20
54
Times (£) HS2 had bought 2,900 acres of land between Birmingham and Crewe at a cost of £205 million. A £100m loss is expected on the sale. Come along Labour, say something. Sometimes responsibility comes along before power.
8
32
53
Bellway: record sales of 5,656 homes in six months to January. Order book £1,625m. A number’ of sites have cladding problems. “This is a complex area and an update will be provided with the release of the Interim Results.” (On March 24). After gov has spoken, in other words.
3
25
53
Insurance Times (£)”,..the entity that chooses the insurance is generally the recipient of a substantial commission from the insurance provider – This is one of the biggest scams in leasehold.” A scam the FCA will hopefully expose.
5
28
52
House of Lords Committee attacks widened Permitted Development Rights laws, fearing (rightly) they “could lead to the construction of low quality housing.” In other words, tomorrow’s slums.
4
31
52
NHBC: flat starts plunged to 13% of starts in Q3, against 29% last year. Detached starts up from 28% to 36% of total, highest since 2002. Total starts up 14% in Q3 to 33,779. But London starts collapsed by 78%. Looks like confidence in the capital’s flat market has collapsed.
10
38
52
BBC: “MPs have backed setting the cost of ground rents on new houses at "one peppercorn" a year.” That duck effectively dead. What many more millions are waiting for (including me) is a make good of the promise to banish medieval tithe on existing homes.
3
20
51
ST (£) “So how did properties valued at nothing suddenly become worth £300, 000 each?” Developer buys 9 homes for £10k: converts to HMSO’s for vulnerable adults, whose rent is paid by gov. Sold for £2.7m. Council fails to collect overage profit.
4
44
50
FT (£) “..the industry body’s latest report bemoaning an “influx of new taxes, levies, regulations and policies” is crass for a sector that has reaped the benefits from repeated government attempts to stimulate buyer demand over the past decade.” Spot on.
4
34
50
Mail: “Lenders won’t provide mortgages until the properties have passed a fire risk assessment, but a shortage of engineers has created waits of up to ten years.” Read and despair.
8
27
51
Guardian: “After counting 26 major deviations from the original permission, the Royal Borough of Greenwich has taken the extraordinary move – “unprecedented”, it said – of ordering the developers of the Mast Quay II development to pull it down.” Blimey.
11
22
51
Mail: “Solicitor Steph Pike, 29, paid £193,000 for her one-bedroom flat in the 109-apartment development, completed months after (Grenfell). With the inferno fresh in the memory, buyers sought and got assurances their homes were safe.” Breach of promise?
6
31
50
FT (£) The Competition and Markets Authority has launched an investigation into the ‘suspected sharing of commercially sensitive information’ among eight major house-builders.
6
38
50
Mail: “…nearly half a million square feet of office space inside the tower is currently unused, according to figures shared with MailOnline by Costar. Canary Wharf itself puts the figure at 275,000sqft.
3
37
49
FT (£) “factors such as high commission paid to brokers and property managers could be contributing to the problem.” A lot of brokers and agents are going to lose a lot of income when this decades-long scandal is killed with a dose of sunlight.
3
21
49
Times(£) “Britain does not have a housing crisis. Britain has a severe shortage of affordable homes for would-be homeowners in the southeast, and a nationwide shortage of homes for rent for the poorest in society. The two issues are distinct.” Deep wisdom.
17
22
50
Sunday Times (£) “Help to Buy has helped Persimmon generating 50% of its sales, adding rocket fuel to the £500m bonus scheme and helped the house-builder report £1bn profit.” And Robert Jenrick would like to keep dribbling on more fuel.
6
25
49
Gove attacks construction product manufacturers for not agreeing to pay up to remedy cladding defects and threatens them to ‘do whatever it takes’ using new new unit being set up to pursue them through the courts.
6
26
50
Post-Eunice damage to some flimsy three year old homes near me.
9
14
49
Hansard: MP demands insurers who have hiked up block insurance premiums help pay for cladding scandal. Minister reveals colleague, Lord Greenhalgh, has discussed setting up ‘pool’ insurance with sector to bring down costs of block insurance.
3
25
49
Persimmon agree to let anyone who purchased a long leasehold home since 2000 can buy freehold for max £2000. Deal with Competition and Markets Authority will also compensate those who have paid more. Deal feels likely to be replicated by other house builders under investigation.
4
19
48
Times (£) Gove said: “We desperately need more homes to bring ownership within reach of many more people.” My fun fact of the day. In the decade to Dec 2022 permission was granted for 2,881,000 homes. The number started was 1,517,000.
10
30
49
Times (£) The amount of vacant UK office space has jumped 65% since 2020. There is 102 million sq ft of empty offices, data from CoStar shows — the most since 2014. About a third of that space is in London.
7
33
49
Leasehold Knowledge: managing agents make between 48% and 73% profit from own block insurance companies. Traditional insurers make 15% -31%. Explains why top five agent once told me they would never voluntarily give up what they knew were excessive fees.
2
43
47
Telegraph (£) “Nine Elms feels more like one of provincial China’s obscure metropolises than a high-end development.’ If planners don’t limit height and density - and leave the mix and size to the market, well, this is what you get…
12
24
49
@team_greenhalgh
Minister for cladding scandal, Stephen Greenhalgh, urges profitable builders “to do the right thing.” One still resisting doing the right thing, I gather, is Ballymore at New Providence Wharf. EG (£)reports profits up from £22.3m to £80.3m in 2019.
4
24
47
Mail: How 'predatory' Wall Street landlords are pricing Brits out of housing. One American firm buying up British homes is investment company Blackstone, which owns Leaf Living and Sage Homes in the UK. via
@MailOnline
16
32
47
Gove rips into insurance brokers as well. No wonder, this flagrant 64% increase in commissions to £159m between 2019 and 2021 has been made on the back of those who died in the Grenfell fire.
3
27
46
ST (£) European Land, the developer and ultimate owner of the freehold, threatened to confiscate their homes unless they paid £7.5m for repairs. European Land is a joint venture involving the billionaire brothers Simon and David Reuben.
4
46
44
ST (£) “Only 43 per cent of flats on the market are under offer or subject to contract, compared with 73 per cent of houses, according to PropCast, a data analyst.”
6
26
48
Gove calls for ‘veil of secrecy’ to be lifted for land held in trusts, not only be overseas owners, but UK trusts as well. Consultation document here:
7
33
47
Mail: “Parliament must ensure the Government indemnifies leaseholders from the costs. It will take years to allocate blame and costs. The only certainty is that the leaseholders are innocent.” The correct approach. Let gov seek redress.
via
@MailOnline
2
30
44