Oh no. Not him again.

A frequent complaint to property journalists from estate agents is that too many stories feature “the usual suspects” – Savills and Knight Frank, of course, plus frequently-quoted big names like, say, London agents Ed Mead and Lindsay Cuthill.

Why do these same names appear so often in so many stories?

The superficial answer, of course, is that Savills, Knight Frank and Douglas & Gordon (Mead’s agency) employ their own PR staff or hire extraordinarily expensive PR firms to make sure these brands and their leading lights feature as frequently as possible.

There are three more detailed reasons why there are these “usual suspects”.

1. Big name property firms can afford to spend high (sometimes seven-figure) sums on PR each year because they are good businesses, trading Britain’s best properties. In Savills’ case, the firm has what is regarded by some as the best residential research team, too. Those are excellent reasons for journalists to quote them, even if they are “the usual suspects”. It would be odd to quote people rather less successful, surely?

2. Journalists are, depending on your viewpoint, lazy or busy. So PRs and estate agents who ring back almost immediately or send emailed quotes or produce a photogenic case study within the hour, will inevitably be quoted time and again. And that is what the ‘big names’ do now – not just the ones cited above but the likes of Strutt & Parker, Chesterton-Humberts, Property Vision and their ilk, all with substantial PR assistance.

3. The third reason for serial-quoting is that most top PRs and their clients are in London. WTF? Well, you're right - being in London is no good reason to quote anybody. But London PRs love schmoozing London-based property editors and journalists. So only agents wealthy enough to buy or employ London PR teams stay ‘in the loop’ and can schmooze more often. The less affluent and the out-of-London property operations get short shrift as a result.

I sympathise with 1 and 2 and would defend quoting the usual suspects for those reasons. As I am an out-of-Londoner, I reckon reason 3 stinks – but it still applies.

However, things are changing, at least a little.

Twitter and Facebook certainly do not replace good PR but they are starting to push ‘new voices’ into newspaper and online articles. The supreme example is Tracy Kellett of BDI Homefinders, quoted frequently in the mainstream property press these days because of her formidable and authoritative presence on Twitter.

Now some of the press appears to be catching on that there are these other voices.

Two quite different national newspapers have, in just the past fortnight, asked me to ease off on the usual suspects and instead bring new opinions into articles. One editor directly asked for quotes from social network contributors rather than ‘established’ sources.

So if you are one of those agents wondering why the same names appear in article after article, you now know what to do: get social networking or, if you feel flush, hire a PR based in Chelsea.


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Tweedledee, Tweedledum, Tweedle-Dem

As Cleggmania sweeps Britain - well, saunters down the middle of the road anyway – I thought we should look at how the Lib Dems’ housing policies would conflict with Labour’s and the Conservatives’.

It’s disappointing how few housing and development policies the parties have set out but if we are in for a hung parliament with the Lib Dems linking with a second party, these are the potential housing clash-points. The Lib Dems…

…oppose eco-towns, a cherished (if largely unfulfilled) Labour policy, but want stricter eco-criteria for new-build homes – unspecified aspirations which both the other main parties hint at, too;

...want to sharply reduce numbers of quangos with development powers in favour of elected local authorities - slightly closer to the Tories' ideas than to Labour;

…want to build “tens of thousands of affordable homes to rent”, a policy so broad and uncontentious (as it gives no idea of where, how or by when) that almost any other party could live with it;

…call for a grant system to bring 250,000 empty homes back into use by incentivising owners. The Tories have very gingerly suggested the same thing and Cameron very publicly backed initiatives along these lines by the Empty Homes Agency;

…want to scrap regional housing targets and devolve planning powers to towns and neighbourhoods. Again its commitment is extraordinarily vague but this certainly is in the camp of the more specific Tory ‘localism’ proposals;

...suggest adding VAT to new-build homes. You don't need me to tell you how the volume builders have responded to that. No other party has advocated it;

…want to control the numbers of second homes – its manifesto does not say how but it does hint at using development control and zoning powers to prevent further homes in certain locations becoming holiday properties. The other two parties have steered clear of this hot potato;

…advocate a so-called SafeStart mortgage system to protect buyers from negative equity if house prices plunge and oblige lenders to slow down their policies on repossession. The Tories and Labour both have broadly similar (that is, broadly unspecific) promises.

It looks to me as if there is somewhat more common ground between the Lib Dems and the Tories than with Labour, but it's a close run thing. In any case, the three have many policies (on housing and other subjects) that are virtually interchangeable.

But let's remember one fact.

There may be a shortage of homes compared to households, significant levels of homelessness, and high prices and poor mortgage availability causing owner-occupation to fall for the first time in four decades, yet no party is putting forward what anyone could claim to be a major cohesive policy on housing.

And that is to the eternal shame of all of our politicians.

If you would like to to comment on this article, click HERE to e-mail Graham.

False Gods With Good Publicists

We have a lot of false gods in property; those in the know don’t regard them as gods at all, just rather well-oiled image machines.

Another property blog describes the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ housing market survey as not actually meaning anything. Yet another asks whether the RICS survey “has plumbed new depths of daftness”. They don’t explain their comments but let me attempt to do so.

The RICS’ press office makes a splash when its monthly market survey is issued, and the print and broadcast media give it plenty of space (and I have been known to do so myself), but its methodology is basic in our era of almost forensic exactitude. It is an “index” based on the opinion and judgement of just a few score of agents around the entire country. If the RICS called it something like “a gut feeling index” that would be more accurate but of course its credibility would fall.

There are several other false gods like this in our property world:

• The National House Building Council portrays itself as a consumer body with a near-monopoly over new-home warranties. Yet its 15-person board is vastly more representative of house builders than of consumer protection. Its refusal to say how many complaints are upheld against specific builders is unhelpful to consumers and shows a lack of transparency we would not accept from, say, MPs or banks these days;

• ‘Overseas sellers federations’ with stickers in agents’ windows have almost no power to help buyers of homes overseas who say they are mistreated or conned. Ask any law centre, Citizens’ Advice Bureau or property lawyer and they will say numbers of aggrieved buyers have risen many-fold in recent years – they also say so-called ‘federations’ suggest a level of consumer protection that they cannot deliver when something does go wrong;

• Agents’ property indices are widely-quoted (again I plead guilty from time to time) but just try finding out their methodology. Some do a thoroughly sound job with wholly valid results but others are flakey, producing ‘indices’ based on very few deals in a spattering of areas selected to produce results that flatter the agents’ own markets. By clever wording, and the services of an expensive PR, these ‘results’ receive wholly undeserved gravitas.

But we know all this, don’t we? The problem is, the public doesn’t – at least not always – so it’s down to the grubby hacks of this world to exercise more care when quoting from and explaining the background to these reports.

Right then. On with the election…


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'Prop Int' - Lucy Morton, lettings guru

My job involves meeting many of the key individuals in the property world - which is nice - and I'll use this blog to share what I call 'Property Intelligence' with readers.

So here goes with Lucy Morton, arguably Britain’s best known lettings agent.

Given how little publicity the rental sector gets that’s not such a feat, perhaps, but even in a competitive field of agents it is unlikely that anyone would beat Lucy.

She is a partner in W A Ellis, handling rental property in plush Knightsbridge, and is nearing the end of her term as president of the Association of Residential Lettings Agents and – wearing an ARLA hat – is on the Property Standards Board, too.

In a lengthy interview, Lucy gave me her views not only on the current soaraway London lettings market but on the industry’s big issues of the day. These include:

• Sharp criticism of laws obliging anyone letting to three or more unrelated people to comply with House in Multiple Occupation regulations (now in force), and automatically turning some rental deals into Assured Short-term Tenancies (coming into effect in October but being applied retrospectively);

• She wants lettings agents regulated, preferably via licensing. “It’s shocking that so many remain unregulated.” Currently only 40% of lettings agents are in ARLA and she suggests the government may make it mandatory for agents to join an ALRA-style standards body once 70% voluntarily come on board;

• May will see a big ARLA push to publicise the importance of agents joining the body, and of tenants ensuring they only deal with association members;

• She says the recession has led to tenants asking for references on landlords. “They want to know that the landlord will be able to cover his mortgage payments throughout their tenancy";

• The current central London rentals market is the busiest Lucy has known in 27 years. She cites an example of one tenant who, when faced with his rent being increased from £800 to £875 per week, chose to leave and find a cheaper alternative. A few days later he returned, asking if his old place was still available. “It had let for £1,000 a week” she says. (The good news in this story is that the inconvenienced tenant was a banker);

• Demand continues to grow and stock supply remains strictly limited. Lucy cannot see the situation changing “unless terrorism or mass unemployment intervenes in central London”.

Lucy may run one of London’s oldest agencies (established in 1868) but she espouses modern ideas, and not just about licensing. Her firm is one of the most active property corporates on Twitter and no longer uses a traditional PR but instead hires property pundits to promote and publicise the firm – a canny fusion of roles that might just be how more property players operate in the future.


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You Are A Bitchy Lot (Thank God)

Most property professionals are agreed on this – if the market goes up it’s largely their doing and if it’s dropping it’s because bloody journalists are talking it down.

Even so, lots of property people are very keen to talk to us journos, often off the record and frequently to bitch about other property people. It’s good fun for us.

I was reminded of this in an email I received recently from one buying agent about rivals I had the temerity to quote in a Daily Telegraph article. She complained that she wasn’t quoted when I instead chose to mention “some of our competitors who stay afloat by doing outsourcing work from bigger companies like ourselves.”

We often get insights into industry battles like this.

Some years ago I received a breathless telephone call from one of the very poshest estate agencies complaining when Savills set up its Prime Purchase buying division, without using the Savills name, offices or email addresses. “They’re making money from both ends of the deal, pretending to be independent when they’re not. It’s appalling. It should be exposed” said the posh bod. Within a year the complaining agency set up its own buying division and (you’ve guessed it) there was no top-line mention of the corporate identity in its title or office and email addresses.

A different posh estate agency recently complained about a story I wrote, with one of its PRs going to the editor of the publication in high dudgeon, disputing my version of events. But the source of my information was, of course, an employee of the company who – for his or her own reasons – was happy to provide inside information.

I’ve had two others agents’ complaints in 10 years of writing about property and in each case the same thing had happened – an employee had come to me to explain what was going on. So yes, we get a lot of bitchy insider information from property people briefing against their bosses.

Property journalism is hardly renowned for its hard edged investigative nature but even so there is the occasional rough and tumble like this; if what you write does not make the occasional wave, there is little point doing the job.

Yet it strikes me that the venom with which property professionals talk of their rivals and peers makes them far, far bitchier and harsher even than competing hacks.

And that, of course, makes my work quite good fun. So thank you.

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Things...Did They Only Get Better?

So here it is, the May 6 general election. Is it the end of an era? Have 13 years of Labour finished? Did the song lyrics come true and did things only get better, property-wise?

Since Tony Blair became prime minister on May 1 1997:

…UK house prices have risen 178% according to the Nationwide or 161% according to the Halifax;

…estate agency commission ranges have gone from 1.5% to 2.5% then, to 1% to 3% now, depending on location and contract;

…the owner-occupied sector has increased from 16m in 1997 to 17.5m now, although owner-occupation is now in gentle decline;

…the number of homes rented from councils or housing associations has fallen from 5.5m to 4.5m - despite social housing programmes, right-to-buy has continued to reduce council stock;

…the private rented sector has risen from 10% of UK housing stock (2.1m people), to 12% (2.6m);

…UK consumer prices have risen 37% according to the Office of National Statistics;

…annual stamp duty revenue to the Exchequer from house moves has risen from £607m to about £7 billion in 2007 and down to about £4 billion today;

…there have been nine housing ministers, some of them in office for only months – Hilary Armstrong (97-99); Nick Raynsford (99-01); Lord Falconer (01-02); Lord Rooker (02-03); Keith Hill (03-05); Yvette Cooper (05-08); Caroline Flint (08-08); Margaret Beckett (08-09); John Healey (09-10);

…the Blair family’s property portfolio has risen in value from an estimated £775,000 in 1997 to an estimated £8.3m today;

…petrol has risen from £2.63p a gallon to over £5 today;

…defence spending has risen 11% in real terms, after inflation, because of UK involvement in wars;

…the UK has gone from winning the Eurovision Song Contest (Katrina and the Waves, 1997) to 5th (Jade Ewan, 2009) via a lowest-ever 26th (Gemini, 2003).


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