Making money: what the experts think
London citadel
Who says the London property market is dead, asked Amie Gordon on Mail Online. A luxury home, a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace, has just been sold for “a record £95m” to the US hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, who runs the $27bn Chicago-based Citadel fund. An elegant Grade II property, 3 Carlton Gardens in St James’s is the latest in a string of houses purchased by Griffin, who is worth a reported £6.8bn. “The deal comes amid a slump in the market for high-end London homes,” said the FT. Prices in the capital’s most exclusive districts have fallen 18% since their 2014 peak, according to Savills. Despite paying a record price for his new trophy, Griffin may consider he got a bargain. He secured a £30m discount on the house, which has been on the market for the past two years at £125m.
Shopping pall
So much for houses. The real pain in this sector, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian, is currently being felt in retail property, where prices have collapsed so “dramatically” that a Scottish shopping centre in Kirkcaldy (with 21 stores and a large car park) is currently on the market “with a reserve price of just £1”. Admittedly, this is “an extreme example”, but analysts at Jefferies believe the situation is so serious, they’re calling it “shopageddon”. Looking at the total return performance (share price plus dividend) of the sector’s leading players last year, one can see why. Here are the “lowlights”: Intu: -51.8%; Capital & Regional: -49%; and Hammerson: -36%. “It is very hard to see what is going to improve confidence in this sector in 2019.”
Taxing times
As the tax deadline approaches, HMRC is in trouble for hitting hundreds of taxpayers with £100 “late fines” even though they had filed their returns at least a month before the 31 January deadline, says the FT. Perhaps hoping to endear itself, the Revenue has published an entertaining list of past excuses. One late filer claimed their mother-in-law was “a witch and put a curse on me”; another said “they were too short to reach the postbox”. One taxpayer claimed to be “just too busy – my first maid left, my second maid stole from me, and my third maid was very slow to learn”.