What’s that saying about the way to a man’s heart? Well, not to be exclusionary about it, it seems the way to anyone’s heart is, in fact, through their stomach.
Bloomberg may have tried to entice its people back to its office (pre-Boris’s sort of u-turn) with the offer of money, but in real estate we know what the people really want. You can’t buy people back in. Oh no, you’ve got to feed them.
Rumour has it that, in real estate offices around the country, workers have been increasingly happy to return once corporate cafeterias have opened. Well, mostly happy. It seems Fridays are still overwhelmingly a work-from-home day (Diary can’t think why). But one West End landed estate has a cunning plan to help boost occupancy in its HQ: free fish and chips on a Friday.
Will workers really be persuaded to actually get dressed and make the commute in just for a lovely bit of battered cod and some vinegar-soaked chips? Diary could be tempted…
Blame it on the journos
Toscafund chief economist Savvas Savouri has his own theory on the struggle to get people back to the office, outlined in a new paper that delves into the economic hurt that could be on the cards if we don’t return to our desks. And Diary couldn’t help but feel attacked by his analysis.
“I cannot discuss the clamour for new home-working freedoms,” Savouri said, “without identifying the single greatest source of agitation for such unprecedented and, I believe, unworkable change: journalists.” Gasp!
He goes on to argue that many journos have long seen home-working as the norm and now want to foist it onto everyone else. “That journalists imagine they can use the unusual nature of THEIR working routine as a yardstick for the rest of us goes to show how little they relate to the vast majority as well as how badly they fail the voir dire test,” Savouri added.
Consider us told! It almost makes Diary want to take to its bed… which, conveniently, is just upstairs…
Listen to the bee-side
Now, although we jest about Savouri’s thoughts on journos filing copy in their PJs, the economist’s paper makes a strong argument for encouraging workers back to a five-day week in the office, with the support it gives corporate cultures and city economies. But the paper ended with yet another surprise – an impassioned plea, boxed out from the rest of the paper, to save the bees.
“Without bees we would suffer dire food shortages,” he wrote. “We would of course adjust to these with time. Adjust to, yes, but it would be to a form of scarcity not experienced outside of wartime siege. The UK that we have come to know economically would disappear if bees did.” He’s absolutely right, of course, but after his criticism of our trade, it stings to admit that.
The £3m question
It’s a quandary that Diary won’t ever have to concern itself with: “What can £3m get you in the prime global property market?” Not Buckingham Palace, that’s for sure. Emoov has valued that at £4.9bn – but that’s a different press release altogether. Here, we are concentrating on high-net-worth mortgage broker Enness Global, and its advice for HNWs with three mill of loose change jangling in their pockets.
Using figures from Savills Prime Index, it crunched the numbers on price per square metre in cities across the world. And, according to Enness: “If space is your primary concern, Cape Town is the place to buy.” You can secure 1,330 sq m of luxury South African real estate for your £3m. In Dubai, that shrinks to 609 sq m, with Madrid in third (474 sq m).
Unsurprisingly, in London the sum gets you a positively bijou 186 sq m – but, if you like things really snug, Monaco is the place to go. There, you can swap your £3m for a mere 67 sq m.
Managing director Hugh Wade-Jones says: “An air of exclusivity and reduced availability of space has seen property prices in the global playgrounds of the super-rich explode in recent years. As a result, those looking for a certain size of home are required to pay a considerable sum for the pleasure.” Though, if your NW isn’t as H as some, console yourself with the thought that size doesn’t matter.
Why did the chicken cross the screen?
Video calls continue to delight and consternate in equal measure – and, it seems, they are a little hen-pecked over at Homes England. As they put it on Twitter: “A timely reminder of how different today is to our usual staff events as a chicken makes a cameo appearance during a lively discussion about infrastructure delivery and placemaking.” That’s 2020 for you… just one “what the cluck?” moment after another.
