Much hot air over zero-carbon homes
The Treasury has revealed that stamp duty exemptions for zero-carbon homes will end in 2012, when they will be reviewed.
Answering, or rather, not answering a parliamentary question this week about the number of homes affected, Treasury minister Angela Eagle said numbers would rise as more green property came to market.
By way of example, she pointed to 200 zero-carbon homes being built at Hanham Hall, Bristol, but neglected to mention that the scheme has seen just six homes qualify to date.
Next week, the Treasury will come under further pressure to relax its definition of “zero-carbon”, which at present requires buildings to be powered by renewable energy generated on site.
On Monday, the UK Green Building Council is expected to warn that, as it stands, the regime risks excluding most commercial development.
Rent Cassandras not popular at CBRE
City agents have been rather coy about implying that rents might be set to fall in the coming months in the wake of redundancies, tending to avoid the topic or bury the news in the back of quarterly reports.
However, CB Richard Ellis broke ranks at the end of last month with one of the bleakest forecasts yet.
It wrote to clients saying it expected top rents – which reached £68 per sq ft last year – to fall to £55 per sq ft by the end of this year, and to £50 per sq ft by the end of 2009.
But not all at the firm are happy with such forthright views because the research has not gone down well with some of its most important clients.
After all, it will be a tough balancing act for a CBRE agent to let a City development at, say, £60 per sq ft, when the firm’s own research team is predicting the same space will be worth £5 per sq ft less by the end of the year.
‘Diplomatic business’ hinders West End deal
The collapse of a number of high-profile investments – victims of the faltering debt market – has seen analysts focus on two West End deals.
The first is the purchase of Covent Garden tower Orion House by Greek shipping tycoon Achilleas Kallakis.
Suspicions have been raised due to the amount of time the deal, agreed in March, is taking to complete. However, we hear the deal is on track to be wrapped up by the end of May, with the delay put down to Kallakis being busy on “diplomatic business”.
Such an explanation – however baffling – has not been put forward in relation to the sale of HSBC’s West End HQ on St James’s Street, SW1, on which exclusivity has long lapsed without the mysterious purchaser completing.
Senior partners seen as malingering moggies
The dozen or so members of the Windsor Group have a new chair. The senior partners and chief executives of the biggest firms of agents occasionally meet close to the said Berkshire town to discuss matters of common interest.
The job of running the group is not as exciting as it sounds. “Like herding stray cats,” is how one member describes the task of reaching consensus on anything.
The outgoing chair is Robert Peto, the only man in the public gaze at an otherwise reticent DTZ. His role is being taken by Nick Shepherd of Drivers Jonas – with the warm approval of a least one other member.
“It’s the sort of job where you avoid eye contact when the position is being discussed.”
Cocktails and cabaret – a tonic for AP protesters
When GraceMark and GE Real Estate bought the former Associated Press headquarters at 98-99 Fetter Lane, EC4, last year, they would have been aware of protests over the redevelopment.
The office scheme will see the loss of yet another journalistic institution on Fleet Street, and has resulted in an objection from law firm Macfarlanes, which says its privacy will be invaded.
That won’t distress the property industry too much. But one more objection could make people more sympathetic.
A neighbouring cocktails and cabaret club, Volupte, has objected on the grounds that the scheme will be dusty, dirty and noisy – and therefore likely to cause a dramatic loss of trade.
Walter celebrates 228 years in property
In last week’s feature about the oldest property agents in Britain, we omitted to mention Walter’s of Lincolnshire, auctioneers and valuers founded in 1790 – the year in which Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutti premiered in Vienna, and the shoelace was invented.
The firm, whose founders claimed to be descended from Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury 1193-1203, is still run by the seventh generation of the family, J Edward Walter.
Persimmon site haunted by the dead
An unexpected foe joined the likes of great crested newts, bats and tree-huggers on developers’ dartboards this week – lepers.
Persimmon’s plans for a70-home scheme and130-room hotel next to Kent Cricket Club’s headquarters have been delayed after body parts from a medieval leper cemetery were discovered.
The 12th-century St Lawrence Hospital was on the site centuries before the cricket team, along with its patients. A large number of leprosy victims were buried in the grounds.
Persimmon has vowed to continue with the scheme after a detailed archaeological survey is carried out.
At least interested first-time buyers will feel at home, given their current leper-like status with mortgage lenders.
