Search

THE SLOW MOTION CAR CRASH OF BUY TO LET IS raising fears that more than 20 years of relative freedom for landlords could end in tough new regulations as politicians [...]

PROPERTY SOFTWARE FACES ITS BIGGEST CRISIS SINCE technology began to play a key role in the industry almost 20 years ago. Moves towards real estate investment trusts and short leases, [...]

After five years trying to teach Brits how to invest in real estate, a US banker was looking forward to a flight home on Concorde. 'London has had it,' he [...]

A SPECK IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC, ST HELENA IS SO remote that it was the only place considered secure enough for Napoleon's exile during the final years of his life. [...]

INTERNET SEARCHING COMES A CLOSE SECOND TO E-MAIL as the advantage of new technology picked by most professionals. This works on two levels. Most of the big names now pool [...]

WHEN ANNUAL PROFITS ARE WIPED OUT BY valuation writedowns and shares trade at less than a 10th of the float price, most people might be inclined to call it a [...]

TRAFFIC STREAMS PAST EUSTON STATION, DIVING into London's congested heart or struggling to escape westwards. Stepping into the glass palace that overlooks this roaring tide is like being washed by [...]

A CENTURY AGO, WHEN THE STUDY OF MENTAL health was in its infancy, a whole range of people were diagnosed as 'mad' and locked away in asylums--hence the number of [...]

YOU MIGHT THINK A DOUBLING OF returns on residential investment would whip property-hungry fund managers into a feeding frenzy. You would be wrong. There is plenty of interest in residential, [...]

WHO BUYS TECHNOLOGY? MORE THAN 2,000 visitors are expected at PCS Expo in London's Business Design Centre later this month, and there surely can't be that many IT managers in [...]

THE BIGGEST PROPERTY REVOLUTION IN MODERN times has been greeted with unnatural calm. After a swift beauty parade that sorted out who will switch from traditional listed company to a [...]

REGENERATION IS A DIRTY BUSINESS, AND THE dirtier it gets, the more Stephen Casey likes it. We're not talking backhanders and dodgy deals here. Casey is a 30-year construction veteran [...]

'The office of the future will be either like the Hilton or a satanic mill.' That's the view of Steve Gale, an architect and MBA who investigated the impact of [...]

EVERYONE TALKS TO THEIR COMPUTER--IF ONLY IN four-letter expletives. But chatting away to a workstation is no longer solely the preserve of the frustrated. In fact, it is now so [...]

IMAGINE BEING SADDLED WITH THE PROPERTY from hell. A site visit with the digital camera produces that old standby 'in need of attention'. The postcode will be 'up and coming' [...]

AS BUY-TO-LET GOES OFF THE BOIL, A NEW breed of landlord born out of the hysteria of the past few years is having to look further afield for opportunities, to [...]

HISTORY HAS A HABIT OF REPEATING ITSELF. THE Thames Gateway is a rehash of post-war new towns and 1980s development corporations. Hysteria over housebuilding has emerged during every boom since [...]

WHEN THE FIRST COMPUTER CHURNED OUT REAMS OF payroll and purchasing tables almost half a century ago, a myth was born that still undermines almost every facet of business: technology [...]

A DECADE AGO THE PROPERLY' INVESTMENT industry seemed to be spiralling to destruction. Institutions were deserting in droves, disillusioned by recession, underperforming property companies, new demands to hold assets in [...]

THERE'S AN OLD SAYING THAT IF YOU WANT TO SEE where the UK property industry will be in 10 years, look at the US today. That held true for office [...]

IT USED TO BE SO EASY. FIND A SITE, PICK UP A bank loan, build something, let it, squirrel it away in the portfolio or sell it to an investor. [...]

AGENTS LIKE SEPTEMBER. A THOUSAND CHAIRMEN bounce back into the office sparking with ideas about moving the business along. But this year the return to work could bring despair, as [...]

Land Securities, the UK's largest property company, created a marker for the rest of the industry when it set up an environmental policy covering its own offices, investment assets and [...]

Descriptions of Poland slip easily into cliche: war torn, unstable, the pawn of competing power blocks, the victim of endless friction between east and west. But a new world order [...]

Michael Lange won't get off the phone. 'I've three more points,' he tells me. The trouble is he said that half an hour ago and has listed 12 already. Moscow [...]

A white-hot furnace bubbles unattended in the corner. One of the country's leading glassblowers is taking a break to banter with Harry Platt about how strange it is to be [...]

CRUMBLING EQUITIES MARKETS, AMERICAN CORPORATE scandals and falling stock markets mean there has seldom been a better time to invest in property. Funds have for decades shied away from property [...]

Watching global computing giants Dell and Hewlett Packard fight each other for the right to pay more than £lbn for an obscure, loss-making technology minnow called 3Par raises a spectre [...]

The recent round of stress testing of European banks has revealed a fundamental flaw in the analysis of risk. It could mean property is far more of a problem than [...]

A cloud hangs over property. Not the fumes spewing from wrecked balance sheets, but a glowing mist that could have a profound impact on how property is built managed and [...]

Ask half a dozen top players in property technology to pick the main advance in the past decade and you get two dozen answers. Like kids in a sweet shop, [...]

The handful of software specialists that underpin the property industry are proving hard to kill. It was widely predicted that they would be squeezed out over the past decade by [...]

Ten years of revolution or a decade of lost opportunities? Now that the 'noughties' have turned into the 'teenies', doubts persist about how far property has progressed into the 21st [...]

Fees for managed space have fallen by between 25% and 40% this year, loss-making centres are closing and some small operators are rumoured to be on the brink of administration. [...]

They should be popping champagne corks at Regus. It is 20 years since Mark Dixon founded the firm and 10 years since he proposed floating a 1bn £ company to [...]

Mike Slade is a smart guy. Smart enough to get out of property just before the 1990s crash, dive back in to become one of the highest-paid operators in the [...]

Few firms run their own canteens, which is sensible if they know little about cooking. They do not wire telephones, make desks or generate electricity for similar reasons. So why [...]

After more than a decade of bickering, Abbey Business Centres managing director Julie Calder reached the end of her tether. 'We knew it couldn't go on,' she says. 'So we [...]

Technology costs plunged 30% per employee in the last 12 months, Remit Consulting's 2009 Benchmarking property sector study shows. But savings came from staff reductions and fewer people needing IT [...]

IS IT VITA TO KNOW THAT SOMEONE YOU MET AT A conference has just had a good lunch? It seems that way for millions of Twitter 'followers'. Many will also [...]

PROPERTY MANAGERS ARE NEVER SATISFIED. OFFER them software that would make NASA look like a garden shed operation and they will respond with a frown, a sigh and the inevitable [...]

COMPUTERS HAVE BECOME VITAL TO SMOOTHING the complex process of creating and managing property, yet this can still seem like taking a holiday from hell. A 'relaxing' break can involve [...]

ARGUS--FINANCIAL VALUATION AND APPRAISAL Paul Broadley, managing director Europe 'It must be down to the recession, but technology for remote working has come of age. Several of the components in [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A FIFTH OF THE UK'S WORKFORCE WAS STRANDED when the worst snow for decades struck this February. Business losses were estimated in the billions, yet the properly industry [...]

HALF A DOZEN PEOPLE ARE CHATTING ACROSS A table in a windowless room, deep in a plush London office block. Nothing unusual there--apart from the fact that one is in [...]

JOHN SPENCER SHOULD HAVE BEEN OUT OF A JOB years ago, but the chief executive of MWB Business Exchange (MWBEX)is proving to be too good to lose. Its majority owner, [...]

THE RECESSION WAS MEANT TO PROVE THE superiority of managed business space over traditional leasing as tenants became frightened of committing to long-term leases. But the sector is convulsed by [...]

THE LAST FEW YEARS HAVE NOT BEEN KIND TO KEVIN McCabe. After selling much of his property portfolio to fund manager Valad, the market collapsed - leaving the shares he [...]

IT CAN BE FRUSTRATING TO LOOK BACK ON GREAT British ideas that did not take off until they were exported across the Atlantic. Jets, radar, atomic energy and computers typify [...]

ONLINE SHOPPING'S SHARE OF TOTAL RETAIL SALES soared almost 20% last year, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show. Following the recent expansion of broadband, this may be [...]