All articles by Alastair Stewart – Page 5
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InsightEverything must change after housing’s 9/11 – there cannot be another Grenfell
Everything changed on the morning of 14 June 2017. Grenfell Tower was UK housing’s 9/11. From now on, more homes need to be built - and be built better. Hang the ideology.
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InsightWill Aldi and Lidl’s move into more affluent areas mean the end of the ‘Waitrose effect’?
My inaugural ‘No s*** Sherlock’ research prize goes this year to the number-crunchers at Lloyds Bank for the revelation that house prices are higher near a Waitrose. A more illuminating finding is evidence of the march of the German discounters into the land of Duchy Originals.
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InsightThe elephant in the Tories’ room remains the future of Help to Buy
I’ve never been invited to the Home Builders Federation annual lunch, which is unsurprising given my less-than-glowing comments about the industry down the years. But I know a man who was at this year’s shindig, and it seems that politics was on the menu more than ever before.
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InsightWhy so many architects on Desert Island Discs and so few property titans?
Any broad-minded property folk who suspect the industry’s jaundiced stereotype of architects is outdated should download Amanda Levete’s appearance on Desert Island Discs . She was straight out of Central Casting.
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InsightLong faces all round as buy-to-let landlords bridle at tax changes
“Why the long face?” the pub landlord asked the racehorse in one of the cornier Christmas cracker jokes from my youth. Last month, that horse might have turned the question on a bevy of depressed landlords.
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InsightBetjeman would struggle to recognise the new wave of resi development – or the prices
What would Sir John Betjeman make of it? There’s a new race among developers to carve for themselves a slice of London’s suburbs, immortalised in the then poet laureate’s 1973 BBC documentary Metro-land .
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Insight2017 Predictions: is Brian Aldridge calling the top of the market?
“Buy land, AJ,” mobster Tony Soprano counselled his son a decade ago, “cos God ain’t making any more of it.” Now Brian Aldridge, the godfather of Ambridge, is following suit.
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InsightFight for margin advantage leaves national housebuilders bricking it
Persimmon - many would agree the doyen of national housebuilders - shocked most seasoned observers when the group’s 2 November trading statement revealed that it was building a brick plant near Doncaster, which would supply a “substantial” number of its homes from spring 2017.
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InsightBarratt arrests hint at dark side to the London boom
“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked”.
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InsightIs HBF using report to send political message?
Eighty per cent of quodophiles attribute the phrase “lies, damned lies and statistics” to Mark Twain, 30% reckon it was Benjamin Disraeli and 10% can’t count.
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InsightRESI: will offsite manufacturing transform housebuilding?
Offsite manufacturing: it’s been poised to transform housebuilding for at least 30 years.
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InsightWho do you think you are kidding, Ms Lagarde?
I can’t help pigeonholing people into Dad’s Army characters.
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InsightWere Brexit warnings overbaked?
One of the many ironies following the Brexit vote was the wave of directors who had previously warned of the resultant pestilence, war and recession rushing to buy their own shares through corporate ‘buybacks’ or ‘PA’ (personal account).
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InsightOne person’s abandoned golf course is someone else’s development opportunity
Here’s an idea to tackle the urban housing crisis . Don’t dig up the green belt - dig up some greens.
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InsightLeaving the EU wouldn’t be catastrophic: it would just bring forward the inevitable
Will Brexit be the straw that breaks the back of property’s long bull run?
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InsightCan we be less in thrall to ‘starchitects’?
I may risk a lynching next time I pass the RIBA, but I just have to say: I could never stand Zaha Hadid .
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Insight‘Cheaper’ properties in London may face greater downward pressure
A two-bed flat in Brixton for £465,000. No windows. You’re ‘avin a larf?
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InsightThe high-end new-build market is experiencing some lows. Time to mention the ‘C’ word?
Crash. It’s an emotive word. And one that’s guaranteed to push you off a few Christmas card lists.
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InsightGovernment initiative aimed at smaller housebuilders doesn’t go quite far enough
David Cameron’s favourite Desert Island Discs track is (unfeasibly) Bob Dylan’s Tangled Up In Blue . It’s all about a once-fond relationship breaking down.
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InsightRecent burst of euphoria from housebuilders doesn’t last long as shares tumble
Fickle things, shares. Just when the housebuilders were suggesting, in the words of two past prime ministers, that they had never had it so good and things could only get better, their shares took a tumble.
