Alastair Stewart
InsightGovernment’s housing Luvvies are all style and no substance
Everything’s been tried: Help to Buy, lifting council house building caps, modular homes. But still the government is nowhere near to hitting its target of 300,000 new homes a year. There’s only one solution. Call in… The Luvvies.
- Insight
Ideas not land are the building blocks for today’s housing entrepreneurs
“Where are the new Lawrie Barratts?” incoming housing minister Kit Malthouse beseeched his audience at Property Week’s RESI Conference in September.
- Insight
Autumn Budget: trick or treat?
With a distinct chill in the air and with only two days before Halloween, did an increasingly ghoulish-looking chancellor deliver more tricks or treats for the property sector?
- Insight
Theresa May dances back to the days before Thatcher’s housing revolution
Mrs T must have turned in her grave. Last week, her latest successor ushered in a return to mass council house building, undermining the defining policy of the Thatcherite revolution.
- Insight
Malthouse’s housing figures didn’t add up for industry audience at RESI
Rarely has a new housing minister inherited more of a numbers game than the latest incumbent. Problem is, numbers might not be Kit Malthouse’s strongest point. Nor his aides’.
- Insight
The tide appears to be turning for quoted housebuilders and the wider industry
Government policy and the more prosaic question of margins vied for attention during the latest round of results
- Insight
It’s best to be on the front foot if you want to ward off a PR disaster
Few chief executives could rival Taylor Wimpey’s head honcho Pete Redfern’s recent record of turning potential PR disasters into triumphs.
- Insight
Help for housebuilders but a kicking for buy-to-letters
Housebuilders got a fairly clean bill of health from the latest government-sponsored review of their industry and more good news on state support is coming, from what I hear. But spare a thought for thousands of ‘mom and pop’ buy-to-letters, who look set for another kicking from ministers.
- Insight
How much of a threat do online agents really pose to traditional players?
I wandered lonely as a geek on a virtual research tour through Putney recently, rather appropriately using Google Street View.
- Insight
Cost cutting is order of the day as rising material prices squeeze housebuilders
Some stories you just couldn’t make up. Take, for instance, failed contractor Carillion’s possible interpretation of an ‘open’ prison.
- Insight
Tall story: Gravity pulls towering resi ambitions down to earth
A distinct change in climate seems to have taken hold among some of the capital’s larger, high-density residential projects.
- Insight
Major regen projects under threat as Momentum builds against private sector
You could almost hear The Dam Busters March. Serco boss Rupert Soames assumed the mantle of his grandfather Sir Winston Churchill as he all but vowed to “fight on the beaches” against the anti-private backlash since the fall of Carillion.
- Insight
Home economics: serious innovation required to boost retirement housing
None of us is getting any younger. Yet, at the same time as ministers are fretting about young people getting on the housing ladder, there are precious few homes for the older age group to step down to.
- Online
Prime time for pricey PCL homes as regional markets turn soggy
Something hitherto unheard of this decade seems to be happening in the market for pricey homes in prime central London. Buyers are buying. Or, more pertinently, sellers are selling.
- Insight
It's going to take time to clear up Carillion mess
“Sssss … [sound of breath being sucked through teeth] ‘oo put this in guvnor?” is likely to be oft-repeated across Whitehall departments this week. “Errr… Carillion.” “Thought as much. We can do it. But it’ll cost ya mate, sorry, minister.”
- Insight
All this talk about defection from the City is just bluster, mes amis
Paris to challenge London as a global finance hub? Surely, Monsieur Barnier, you’re taking the Michel?
- Insight
Any Budget meddling must boost supply, not demand
If Philip Hammond chooses to stimulate housing in his 22 November Budget, he should study the record of his predecessors and stimulate supply rather than demand.
- Insight
Help to Buy boost is great for builders – but not for buyers
Help to Buy: it’s the gift that just keeps on giving. At least for the housebuilders.
- Insight
How Fitzgerald’s simple fix turned around Bovis after profit warning
My DIY achievements have ranged from workmanlike (my deck) to farcical (completing a radiator circuit… minus a 90-degree elbow, resulting in the unexpected appearance of a basement swimming pool).
- Insight
Javid shows housing associations are 'serious business'
Forget for a moment the content - sweeping as it was - of Sajid Javid’s speech yesterday; it’s the language that finally marks an end to the Cameron government’s spleen-fuelled approach to housing associations.
