All Agent P articles
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Professional
Agent P: Buy and sell
Friday 3 February, Adriatic Room, 9am: Posh Girl complains of unwanted attention in a ‘Spoons during a showing of a sticky-floored former bank.
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News
Agent P: PropSki
Friday 20 January, 10pm, Fahrenheit 7 hotel, Val Thorens, Savoi, France: Young Thruster and I have checked in a day early for real estate networking event PropSki. Last year we bonded on the coach from the airport with a gang from Savills. Mistake
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News
Agent P: softly, softly
Friday 16 December, 11am: Only lonely creeps in the office today. I tell Team P over Zoom that GBH has snagged a mandate to make soft bids for assets being unloaded by funds to meet redemption requests.
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News
Agent P: Christmas lunch
Friday 2 December 11am, Oceanic Room: Extra-early Christmas lunch for Team P today. Getting in ahead of the Winter of Discontent strikes. We’ve had a good year: at least until Black Friday, 23 September, the day of that sodding mini-Budget.
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News
Agent P: brainstorm time
Friday 18 November, 8am, Titanic Room: In early. Daunting day. I’ve got a super-secret offsite brainstorm in an hour.
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News
Agent P: Team P
Friday 4 November, 8.30am, Baltic Room: We eye each other, warily, thinking “who’s next?”.
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Professional
Agent P: Spreadsheets
Friday 21 October, 9am, Titanic Room: A white-faced Sporty Girl slides copies of a development appraisal for 60 flats in north London around the table. The spreadsheet, for a Beirut-based client of GBH, shows a GDV of £32m, including the usual 20% developer margin.
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Professional
Agent P: economic crisis
Friday 7 October, 8.15am, Teutonic Room: Full house this morning! Not only are all of Team P present and correct, I’ve not seen so many folks in the office on a Friday since the GBH Christmas party in December 2019, when Those Upstairs paraded the floors in silly Santa jumpers ...
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Professional
Agent P: EPC
Friday 23 September, 9am, Britannic Room. Never mind that deal that collapsed on Tuesday when the client discovered it would cost £3m to upgrade a £15m office block in Reigate from ‘D’ to ‘B’. We’d said the clunker might cost £1m to get a ‘B’-grade Energy Performance Certificate. A GBH ...
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News
Agent P: the fear card
Friday 9 September, 10am, Team P Zoomie-meet! Barred from the office today! Can you believe it? Threatened with P45s in July, unless we entered GBH Towers four days a week come September.
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Professional
Agent P: school holidays
Friday 26 August, 9am, Titanic room: GBH Towers 20% full at best. Fred on the door says the missing are mostly staff with kids, facing a weekend of airport hell tracking back from the Costa Brava or Corsica at the fag-end of the school hols. “Serves ‘em right,” he chuckles. ...
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Online
Agent P: border crossing
Friday 29 July, 3pm, Baltic Room: Posh Girl and Charlie Boy finally return from Dover, three hours late for the Team P meeting to discuss the value of a brand-new shed paid for by the taxpayer, but no longer needed.
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News
Agent P: the Boris of property
Friday 15th July, 9.30am, Teutonic room: Groan. Charlie Boy does like to brag of his political connections. In his element this week, of course. Forty years on from Harrow, a few of his cleverer classmates are MPs. “Gove dared not run for PM for reasons I simply cannot disclose,” he ...
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News
Agent P: don't panic?!
Friday 1 July, 8am, eighth-floor boardroom: Ungodly hour, but the gods of GBH are over from Atlanta. Team leaders have been summoned from their beds. Weird wearing a suit and tie again. Our American masters are a conservative lot. Noah, Wyatt and Logan are dressed like evangelist preachers.
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News
Agent P: meeting
Friday 17 June 8.30am, Baltic Room: Managed to drag entire team into office on a Friday. Result! Done by promising them details of a new instruction, the like of which no one has ever had before.
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News
Agent P: jubilation
Friday 3 June 10.30am: Still under duvet. Bored. Is there anything worse than a street party? I don’t even live in a damn street. Yet a bunch of lonely losers from the lower floors are attempting to assemble a gazebo in the car park fronting our block.
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News
Agent P: payday
Friday 20 May 8.30am, Teutonic Room: Managed to get a full house this week using the carrot of going for lunch and not coming back. Wagamama in Holborn, not the Punchbowl in Mayfair. I saw no need to mention the venue. The days of scoffing the £50 set menu and ...
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News
Agent P: the Otherside
Friday 6 May, 8.30am, Baltic Room: Easier to herd cats than physically gather Team P on a Friday these days. Young Thruster and Geek Boy are in the room, the other shirkers on Zoom.
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News
Agent P: back in the building
Friday 22nd April, 10am. Eighth-floor boardroom: Section heads meeting. Spittle begins to fly from Mike’s mouth as our esteemed UK boss gathers stride in what began as rant against this year’s intake of “work-shy, entitled, insolent graduates”, before metastasising into blast against what he calls the “Home Eff Work shenanigans”.
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News
Agent P: caught in the middle
Friday 8th April, Corinthic Room, 9.30am: “Enough! Enough!” I bellow at Charlie Boy, who was spitting far more than feathers at Posh Girl. Charlie is ex-army, ex-Savills, all Force Nine charm with a laugh like an ack-ack gun. Ageing, but with his contacts, still a deadly deal-getter.