Yesterday morning I woke up excited by an idea. I’ve been feeling guilty about not sending out an Xmas card to all my contacts. I didn’t send one this year because: I’ve been busy/lazy and didn’t get around to it Everyone else does that and at heart I’m a bit of a contrarian When I [...]
Santa Claus – will he deliver in 2010?
By Martin Skinner While researching and considering this blog I’ve been travelling to Poland with my family for Xmas. My family consists of my fiancé Magdalena (and bump), my mum Heather, mum’s partner Bruce and myself. We’ve just flown into a snow covered Poznan for our first Xmas in Poland with Magda’s family and my [...]
Bad, but this year could have been a lot worse
This article from the Sunday Times summed up the year very well. Some of my take-outs were: Deflation averted – good news Temporary inflation boost over Xmas & in the New Year – better than deflation Global growth estimated at 3% in 2010 by the IMF V-shaped recovery likely By David Smith We have all [...]
Student Accommodation Comes of Age (Property Week)
By Doug Morrison Property Week and Unite’s student accommodation conference highlights supply-demand imbalance Last month Unite Group, the UK’s biggest developer and manager of student accommodation, raised £21.5m from the sale and leaseback of a 395-bed block in Bristol to M&G Secured Property Income Fund. The sale price reflected a net initial yield of 6.07%. [...]
Degree of certainty persuades property to get into beds with students
By James Whitmore Students are responsible for the most recession-proof property sector. The tallest tower in London’s financial district, rental growth of 5% a year for the last six years and a conference that this year was more than double the size of last year’s all relate to the fast-emerging student accommodation sector. While every [...]
Logo & pie charts for free …
Click here to read a very amusing PDF email exhange called ”For Free“. Thanks to Joseph for circulating it.
Rally Fighter car built tweet by tweet
By Martin Skinner I noticed this amazing car and fascinating story in the Sunday Times the other day and thought I’d share it with you. The off-roader built tweet by tweet. It highlights the momentum that crowd sourcing is building up, and suggests it is likely to be much more broadly adopted in the years [...]
Safety In Numbers
By Martin Skinner The debate over our recovery from recession continues to rage and provides an amazing insight into the different ways economic facts and figures can be interpreted. Forecasting is a tough game these days and I will simply express my opinion that we are experiencing a recovery more akin to a craggy[rock]-V than [...]
Home Economics: Can taxes control house prices?
By David Smith With some people arguing that we have not yet got through the bust, thoughts are already turning to how to stop the next house-price boom. Adam Posen, a member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, argued last week that interest rates alone would not be enough to stop prices from [...]
Learning to walk again
My new ‘social’ life: Learning to walk again By Martin Skinner In many ways I now see myself as having started my life over again in 2009. I’ve always been a fortunate soul and believe I’m lucky to have a ‘glass half full’ attitude. Even so, my last ‘life’ concluded painfully after a glorious period [...]
