Blog 3

Critical but stable

It is pretty damn obvious housebuilders are moaning about a serious supply shortage, but good to hear they are talking of house price stability by the end of this year. Wishful thinking maybe, but hey we’ll take anything at the moment.
Smart New Homes conducted a survey of 4,500 housebuilders. I did not realise there were so many left, but with mothballed sites they have plenty of time to fill in surveys.
Developers quite rightly had a pop at the Government for being “entirely ineffective”, with builders relying on their own incentives to stimulate the market and shared equity the favourite. The scandal over MPs expenses, which if there was any integrity left in Government should see this rotten Parliament dissolved immediately, has taught us one thing. Government ministers, despite the run of useless housing officials, are total geniuses when it comes to their own housing initiatives. I vote we put Hazel Blears in charge of the nation’s housing immediately. If housebuilders could build homes as quickly as she switches them for tax purposes, we’ll hit targets in no time. I once saw her at a Salford show house opening (can you have a show house in Salford?). When I say I saw her, the vertically challenged Blears was actually being carried around by a brickie in a hod, before being assaulted by a devil on horseback and nearly drowning in a glass of warm white wine.

Health warning

The launch of a company called Property Portfolio Rescue last year – do they have a helicopter and an attractive nurse to resuscitate my flagging house price? – was inevitable and smart thinking. The trouble is their opinions on the health of the property market have to come with a VI (Vested Interest) warning. Now when eternal optimists talk of green shoots, the boys at Property Portfolio Rescue are probably technically and economically correct to shoot down the good news in flames. But when the green shoots well and truly appear, will they still keep shouting we are all doomed and that only PPR can save us?

Yoo who

Talking of green shoots, John Hitchcox of the luxury property design brand Yoo has launched a new company called Green Shoots, buying distressed new build developments and has already scooped up a block of Barratt apartments in North London. Buying distressed new homes? Shouldn’t that be Boo Hoo? How did the word distressed stray into the housing lexicon? I think homes look more disgruntled than distressed, or in the words of the mighty P.G. Wodehouse, far from gruntled.

Property dates

Couple of good lunches lined up this week. First with John Anderson of Princegate. The former Taylor Woodrow marketing supremo is on the rescue trail too, but is keen to stress he is no vulture fund. He has a JV with turnaround specialists Paradigm and they are looking to partner with developers in need of re-capitalising. Cash is king for housebuilders, in good times or bad, so I predict great things from the Princegate Paradigm partnership. To the top floor of Smith’s of Smithfield and don’t spare the horses – medium rare.
And then I head to Worcester for a chat with www.propertyindex.com and founder Darren Richards. His website, with Lee Bramzell at the day to day helm, is moving faster than Usain Bolt over 100 metres, or me downing a bottle of Jamaican rum - 9.69 and 10.14 seconds respectively if you are interested. Darren made about £30 million when he sold his Dating Direct website. I tried something similar with Dating Indirect, where you send a beautiful, intelligent, funny person instead of the client. For some reason it left my clients far from gruntled.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 9:37 am and is filed under Property UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.