Property
Want more diversity? Hire groups, not individuals
If I were to give you a budget to choose your perfect house, you would quickly have a clear idea…
Dear Mary: How can I lie about my age and still use my Senior Railcard?
Q. I was not brought up in England and don’t appear in Who’s Who. This means that there is no…
The hotels trying to turn Cornwall into Kensington
Mousehole is a charming name; it is almost a charming place. It is a fishing village on Mount’s Bay, Cornwall,…
Are the Qataris ready for the curse of Canary Wharf?
I’ve written before of a ‘curse of Qatar’ that might explain misfortunes attending the Gulf state’s UK investments, of which…
London’s real Olympic legacy: paying to build the stadium twice
Giving London’s Olympic stadium a ‘legacy’ is proving to be a very costly business
How Italy failed the stress test (and Emilio Botín didn’t)
Continuing last week’s theme, it was the Italian banks — with nine fails, four still requiring capital injections — that…
Prue Leith’s diary: I want to be green, but I’ve got some flights to take first…
‘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…
Why the real winner from George Osborne’s ‘Google tax’ could be Nigel Farage
George Osborne’s promise to crack down on multinational companies’ avoidance of UK taxes by the use of impenetrable devices such…
What will it take for us to stop doing business with Qatar?
Qatari money has flooded into London – but also into much less savoury places
Andrew Marr’s diary: Seeing shadows of Syria in Limousin’s ghost village
No, no, no, you don’t want a house abroad — the paperwork, the taxes, the piping, the cost of the…
The squeezed middle is a myth
With soaring house prices and low interest rates, the middle classes are doing rather well. But you’d never think so to hear them
Sloane Rangers vs Arabs – the battle for Chelsea
In Knightsbridge and Chelsea, tension simmers between Sloanes and super-rich Arabs
‘Dark pools’ are just another conspiracy of bankers against the public
It was at the Mansion House dinner last year that a City gent two seats away announced himself to be…
How the internet can – and should – destroy estate agents
The internet can – and should – bring it about
Gordon Ramsay joins in the posh invasion of Battersea
London House is in Battersea, which some people call South Chelsea, but is more East Wandsworth to my mind; or…
The engagement-ring theory of property bubbles
Google ‘the bread market’ and you get 135,000 hits, mostly from specialist food industry websites. Google ‘the property market’, however,…
Any other business: How François Hollande let France miss the global recovery train
I’ve always respected stationmasters, but that sentiment is not universally shared. A distinguished friend of mine across the Channel described…
How to make money from the Scottish referendum
An investor’s guide to the Scottish referendum
How mansion taxes will make us all poorer
Mansion taxes may be inevitable – and will make us all poorer
This isn’t a property bubble – it’s a reason to improve London’s transport
Everyone —including me, if I’m honest — has been talking about a new property bubble. But is it for real?…
My mansion tax solution: hit rich foreigners. But no one else
I am surprised no more attention has been given to Martin Vander Weyer’s suggestion in The Spectator two weeks ago…
What Vodafone should do with its huge windfall: invest it in the next Vodafone
Vodafone, which has just collected an £84 billion windfall from the sale of its 45 per cent stake in Verizon…
Welcome to Big Venice: How London became a tourist-trap city
London is at risk of becoming a tourist trap full of second homes
You’ll mock me, but I have to ask: why don’t any of my friends have 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…