Property
Real life
This much I know, I never want to live in an ‘executive home’, and neither do I want to live…
The green house effect
Buying an eco-home? Expect stifling springs and summers
Which behaved worse: callous Thomas Cook or cynical Barclays?
Which is worse, morally and reputationally — to be Thomas Cook, shamed by its refusal to show proper human concern,…
Servants of the super-rich
There is a huge industry catering to London’s foreign plutocracy
Why estate agents aren’t dying out
I don’t like to make business predictions, but — barring some apocalypse — I suspect there will be plenty of…
Mansion migrants
The super-rich can shrug off Labour’s big tax idea. People like me will be forced out
Cold heart of the home
Against sterile modern kitchens
Barometer
A dangerous hobby Three men from Greater Manchester were arrested and held in the UAE after being seen writing down…
The war on rural England
The coalition is letting developers concrete over the countryside, but that won’t help young people buy houses
Going the wrong way one step at a time
If I were to give you a budget to choose your perfect house, you would quickly have a clear idea…
Dear Mary
Q. I was not brought up in England and don’t appear in Who’s Who. This means that there is no…
Cornish and pasty
Mousehole is a charming name; it is almost a charming place. It is a fishing village on Mount’s Bay, Cornwall,…
Qatar’s bid for Canary Wharf fills me with foreboding, even if they deserve each other
I’ve written before of a ‘curse of Qatar’ that might explain misfortunes attending the Gulf state’s UK investments, of which…
The bill that keeps on building
Giving London’s Olympic stadium a ‘legacy’ is proving to be a very costly business
Italy takes the stress-test booby prize as the old Spanish fox emerges the winner
Continuing last week’s theme, it was the Italian banks — with nine fails, four still requiring capital injections — that…
Diary
‘Please God, make me good, but not yet.’ I know the feeling. As I get older and more deeply retired,…
Why my friends love the idea of a nasty, stupid mansion tax
I see all the flaws with a mansion tax, I really do. And yet some little piece of me, some…
Will Osborne’s tilt against Double Dutch tax dodgers play into Farage’s hands?
George Osborne’s promise to crack down on multinational companies’ avoidance of UK taxes by the use of impenetrable devices such…
Whose side are they on?
Qatari money has flooded into London – but also into much less savoury places
Diary
No, no, no, you don’t want a house abroad — the paperwork, the taxes, the piping, the cost of the…
The moaning middle
With soaring house prices and low interest rates, the middle classes are doing rather well. But you’d never think so to hear them
Squaring up
In Knightsbridge and Chelsea, tension simmers between Sloanes and super-rich Arabs
Here we go again: bankers taking liberties in pools full of sharks
It was at the Mansion House dinner last year that a City gent two seats away announced himself to be…
The end of estate agents
The internet can – and should – bring it about
Why don’t any of my friends own holiday homes?
Hugo Rifkind 9 August 2014 9:00 am
This is to be one of those columns that makes the writer faintly wish there wasn’t an internet. It would…