Around the time of the last UK recession in the early 1990s, the then property correspondent of the Financial Times, Michael Brett, published a book entitled "Property and Money". Amongst other valuable advice, this recommended that one should only believe about 10% of what property developers said. Many individuals and organisations are now no doubt wishing that not only they but governments around the world, and not least our own, had followed this guidance.
Moving forward to the present day, I was surprised to see the contents of a press release from a consulting group concerned with "Nimbyism" published without, apparently, any journalistic comment in the main section of last weekend's FT. It should be clear by now that most people have adopted Michael Brett's view of property developers and extended this to a range of other development protagonists, not least our present government.
In this week's FT, much comment is given over to "The Future of Capitalism" series, which started with an article by Martin Wolf on Monday quoting former US President Ronald Reagan : (I paraphrase) Question : "What are the nine most frightening words in the English language ?" Answer : "I'm a government official and I'm here to help". Now this is advice the property development sector, and notably, house-builders should have heeded.
For, as yesterday's free paper the "Metro" stated, again based on a press release (this time from the National Housing Federation) : "The housebuilding industry is lurching towards bust - with a real possibility that the number of new homes built in 2009/10 could slump to the lowest level since the 1920s". Some may remember that our former Chancellor of the Exchequer and now Prime Minister only a few years ago proclaimed "No more boom and bust".
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