All articles by Alastair Stewart – Page 2
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OnlineNo crisis signs for housebuilders
Cost-of-living crisis, rising interest rates, Covid, Brexit and a grinding war in Ukraine. Cue carnage for the housing market? For housebuilders, so far, it’s still a case of ‘crisis, what crisis?’
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NewsInvestors vote with their wallets
When the UK’s top eight stock-market-listed housebuilders announced combined profit writedowns of more than £1bn over three days to pay for recladding, investors might have been expected to press the panic button.
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NewsA Russian threat on the home front
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Mike Tyson’s famous quip has a chilling resonance for a world plotting a recovery from a global pandemic – but now facing off an infinitely nastier brute.
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InsightLondon ends rental drought
London rental levels have finally shaken off the curse of George Osborne, with agents now foreseeing residential rents in the capital rising faster than the rest of the country for the first time since the ex-chancellor’s 2015 Budget put the kibosh on the sector for close on seven years.
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InsightWhat is cladding levy rationale?
There is a similar sense of politicians grasping at straws when you compare Australia’s attempts to deport Novak Djokovic and Michael Gove’s threat to make developers pay £4bn for recladding mid-rise housing blocks. Maybe the housing secretary formulated some of the policy while stuck in a BBC lift for half ...
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InsightHas MMC’s moment finally come?
‘Modern’ methods of construction (MMC) have been the next big thing for building houses since the Romans or earlier.
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InsightHousebuilders not bricking it yet
The abiding metaphor for property is ‘bricks and mortar’, so data on their availability is as good a barometer as any on the relative fortunes of real estate, especially housebuilding. Judging by the latest, it looks like bricks are in shorter supply than, supposedly, turkeys for Christmas.
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InsightTime to fight carbon with carbon
Are you, like me and most Brits, trying to do your bit to save the planet, but totally hacked off by the nihilistic tactics of Insulate Britain? Can I suggest a way to stop the lunatics from gluing themselves to the M25: next time they pounce, turn the heating up ...
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InsightRESI Convention ushered in a hybrid future
I really must get out more. That realisation dawned on me and possibly everyone else at last week’s RESI Convention, held on terra firma at Celtic Manor on 8 to 9 September rather than via the cloud.
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InsightBuilders left bitter by share slide
“We announced fantastic results, our order book went up strongly, we increased the land bank and our net cash position soared. And guess what? Our shares went down.”
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InsightWall of money needs a home
“There’s a wall of money looking for a home,” a financier told me after one in a flurry of recent private equity-funded acquisitions. Where better a home for these billions than in, well, homes?
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InsightDitch the sou’wester for shades
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” a now newly octogenarian Bob Dylan howled in 1965’s Subterranean Homesick Blues. As for housing, you definitely don’t need an economist to know which way prices are going.
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InsightLand scarcity sparks costs surge
Things couldn’t get rosier for the housebuilders, it would seem. Sales volumes and prices are up, irrespective of dwindling government support.
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InsightA levelling-up boost for housing
By ‘eck, the BBC is to drag swathes of its London staff up North and the regions in the name of the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda. It’s bound to price some locals out of the market. And not just for their macchiatos.
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InsightWhy we should stick with bricks
The government’s obsession with modern methods of construction (MMC) seems to know no bounds. Even the chancellor is now a convert. However, I still harbour a heretical allegiance to the most ancient method of construction – brick.
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InsightCladding victims get stung again
The headlines were improving for Number 10. Britain’s vaccine roll-out was, as Ursula von der Leyen admitted, a ‘speed boat’ to the EU’s ‘tanker’ and Boris was seen as having relocated his mojo.
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InsightEven the Black Death had its silver lining
The lights are once more going out all over Europe. But the darkest hours in pandemics have often heralded glorious dawns. The horrors of the Great War and even deadlier flu gave way to the Roaring Twenties; the vast social changes wrought by the Black Death ignited the Renaissance.
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InsightPandemic? What pandemic?
“Tis the season to be jolly careful,” the once ebullient Boris Johnson cautioned the nation, confirming the second lockdown would end in tiers.
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InsightCorporate bids back in housing
You wait years for corporate bids in the housing sector and then at least three come along at once. Could it be the late noughties all over again?
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InsightOffice life needs a radical rethink
I recently spent the two least productive days since the start of lockdown. I went back to the office.
