Peter Bill

Oh…and if any politician spins the 23% increase in starts in the final quarter of 2025 as a good thing, well, most of the rise come from the unblocking of the dam of requests held up by the Building Safety Regulator.

Any sign of a surge in planning applications that might lead to a surge in housebuilding? Nope. Latest figures for whole of 2025 and Q4

Latest progress toward 1.5m homes target by July 2029: 40 months to go, 1,158,000 homes to be built. A run rate of just under 29,000 a month. Total in the 18 months between July 2024 and March 2026 is 342,000. A run rate of 19,000 per month - er…from today.

Estates Gazette (£) My column this week examines the (mostly) upsides and the (few) downsides of Savills £827m acquisition of Eastdil Secured, whose bosses seem a touch over-keen to keep their distance. But Savills is used to waiting….. eg.mydigitalpublication.co.uk/21-march-2026/…

FT (£) Dispute over valuation of unbuilt plots at Battersea Power Station led to firing of chief exec Donagh O’Sullivan, who thought they were overvalued and Malaysian owners, who begged to disagree. Result: industrial tribunal. #myft:notification:instant-email:content" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">ft.com/content/0ea887…

CoStar: “Expedia has appointed Savills to draw up a shortlist that may include staying put. At present it occupies all 250,000 square feet of offices at Derwent London's Angel Building in Islington, EC1” costar.com/article/106045…

Estates Gazette (£) “Quintain, the developer behind the £3.5bn Wembley Park, is reviewing parts of its BTR pipeline. Quintain has completed 6,000 homes in the 85-acre east London masterplan. Of a total 8,500 homes, 6,044 had been designated for BTR.” estatesgazette.co.uk/news/quintain-…

FT (£) Under the order, Raja — who is currently in Dubai — must provide details of all his assets worth more than £10,000 and is prevented from spending more than £5,000 a week without the consent of MFS’s administrators. ft.com/content/161c0f… via @ft

LondonMetric to save £6m a year from the renegotiation of £1.5bn of debt, now costing just under half a perecent less that before.

Picton Property delays publication of annual results as it edges closer to selling the business.

A very big deal in many senses. BP to move global HQ from St James’s Square to LandSec’s south of the river development at Timber Square in SE1, where the oil giant will take the entire 192,000 sq ft 15 floor ‘Ink’ block, which completed this month.

Building (£) Delayed plans for a 52-storey tower in Canary Wharf have been handed a lifeline following agreement of £180m funding with Homes England and Barclays. The loan to with Ballymore and Penta means work on the 434-home scheme can progress. building.co.uk/news/funding-d…

CityAm: Gavin Slark, the new boss of Travis Perkins, said the conflict in the Middle East and the resulting spike of energy prices will force manufacturers to put up prices to deal with higher bills. cityam.com/iran-war-to-dr…

CoStar (£) Federated Hermes Real Estate has brought to market the freehold interest in the 485,000-square-foot Crystal Peaks Shopping Centre in Sheffield. costar.com/article/170233…

BisNow: A Japanese telecoms firm is buying a giant mixed-use east London campus where a major data centre could be built. KDDI bought the 1.1M SF Inventory Estate in Docklands from LaSalle IM and Trilogy for £250M, Green Street News reported. bisnow.com/london/news/da…

Times (£) According to a previous estimate £1.3 billion could be missing but insolvency practitioners said the shortfall was likely to be higher, and potentially substantially so. It is estimated £2.6 billion was provided by institutions to the MFS group. thetimes.com/business/compa…

FT (£) “Vehicles controlled by MFS owner Paresh Raja made several loans in 2019 and 2020 to a property investment partnership linked to Rex Ekaireb, who stood trial and was acquitted by a jury of financial crime offences in 2018.” ft.com/content/60b4ea… via @ft

The Evelyn Estate grants Great Portland an extended head lease on Fitzrovia property, allowing GPE to get on and refurbish 7/15 Gresse Street and 12/13 Rathbone Place into 42,000 sq ft of fully managed offices.

Mail: Raw charging, a major retail and leisure charging operator, is partnering with commercial property developer Landsec to deliver a total of 1,000 new charging bays across 28 Landsec locations, including the Kent shopping hotspot. dailymail.co.uk/money/electric…

Times (£) Savills, the FTSE 250-listed real estate company, accepted an instruction from Birch in June 2025 to manage planning amendments for the project, several months before Ansari’s sanctions designation. thetimes.com/uk/london/arti…