Alastair Stewart
Alastair Stewar has almost 30 years experience of the construction industry as equities analyst, journalist and columnist. He writes a monthly column on the residential market for Property Week and sits on the housebuilding panel of the Experian Construction Forecasting Committee.
InsightCPOs: a four-point mini manifesto
Compulsory purchase orders are “as close as the property industry gets to an authoritarian state”, according to a widely respected contact in the residential sector, who is no stranger to CPOs. My view: they should be used sparingly. But they should be used.
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Kier should look back not forward
Kier doesn’t need ‘Future Proofing’ (the title given to its largely ineffectual turnaround programme). It needs past-proofing, or at least recent-past-proofing.
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Out with the new, in with the old
Purplebricks, the “world-leading hybrid estate agency” has, it admitted on 7 May, “made sub-optimal decisions in allocating capital”. That’s the best euphemism I’ve seen for “lost money”.
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Resi volumes pick up in London
Whisper it, but something seems to be stirring in the hitherto moribund London residential market. People have stopped fretting about Brexit and started buying and selling houses again.
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Death of cul-de-sac exaggerated
Typical blooming architect! Fellow PW columnist Jo Cowen recently heralded the “death of the cul-de-sac” in a tirade against housebuilders. Well I live in one and I reckon society would benefit from more culs-de-sac and less architectural hauteur.
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Brexit isn’t the real market threat
2019: it’s the year of living dangerously, not least for forecasters. I aimed to do a ‘year ahead’ piece in January, but the politicians kept moving the goalposts. Forget trying to predict how the year will unfold; writing even a week ahead of publication threatens serious pratfalls.
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Government’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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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’.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
