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In April 2024 the Labour Party announced their pro-development housing plan reforms and their bold statement setting out their ambitious target of building 1.5 million new homes with at least 50% being affordable housing. However, whilst the Government has set out its ambitious plans, it has not mentioned how it will step in to assist…

The UK construction sector is showing signs of a strong recovery, with growth in July 2024 marking its most significant surge in over two years. This positive momentum follows a period of uncertainty caused by economic challenges and a changing political landscape, but it seems optimism has been revived, particularly following the Labour government’s announcement…

The landscape of Britain’s commercial property market has dramatically shifted following the pandemic, leading to the decline of long-established giants like British Land and Land Securities in favour of more agile and specialised companies focusing on logistics and industrial assets. British Land and Land Securities were once synonymous with some of the UK’s most iconic…

The office development sector has hit a significant slowdown, with new projects reaching their lowest level since the financial crisis. High construction costs, increasing borrowing expenses, and the ongoing shift toward remote work have heavily impacted developers’ willingness to start new office projects. According to analytics group CoStar, from April to June 2024, less than…

The shift away from the standard model of office working has only solidified since COVID, with much of the UK’s workforce now taking back control as to where, how and when they undertake their jobs. This increased expectation for flexibility has led many business owners to reassess their needs for leased office or retail space…

The new government has been in place for two weeks and we’ve had the King’s Speech. Not Colin Firth on this occasion, but King Charles, who spoke Keir Starmer’s words to the nation explaining the government’s forthcoming legislative agenda. As a specialist law firm focused on commercial property developers and commercial property finance providers we…

When any property developer creates a new development the developer and designers are creating their new dream for that location. I am sure this is why many architects become developers as they can use their skills to create a new persona for a location. Developments in many ways are all about selling the dream, this…

The Deloitte London Crane Survey has once again revealed that commercial property developers are showing a propensity to renovate existing offices instead of constructing new ones as they seek to meet occupier demand for eco-friendly buildings whilst navigating the slow planning system and tightening green legislation. The latest issue of the bi-annual survey has highlighted…

Developers, please remember there is an emotional cost as well as a financial cost to bad property transactions. I sat down recently for coffee with a developer, and it struck me that, in addition to the financial cost, there is a high emotional cost to a badly run property transaction. In this case the developer…

Do you know what the top three bridging loan purposes are? Drum roll please… according to Bridging Trends, in third place is bridging for business funding, which nearly doubled from 8% in Q4 2023 to 15% in Q1 2024. The second most popular purpose is chain breaks at 19% (up from 16%). And first place…