MIPIM 2014 DAY 3 – DAVID HARGREAVES’ VERDICT

Retail News

MIPIM this week feels now almost like it did six years ago – a lot of money chasing a little product.

I’ve been here for a couple of days now and there is a real sense of ambition out there – ambition that we’ve been lacking for the last four or five years because we knew we couldn’t fund things.

It now feels like those shackles are off.

The concern, though, is how the planning system will cope with this. There are people keen to do things, there is confidence to do things and there seem to be end investors who will buy. But cumbersome planning procedures could get in the way of this as people try to get on site.

The appetite to do things is out there. Back in 2008, the market fell off the face of a cliff. It seems to have jumped back on almost in the same way it fell off – I’ve had meetings at MIPIM with funders who say they now want to do 10 schemes rather than one.

There is almost a slight sense of panic that people are going to miss the market, which is incredible when you look back at the way the market was nine months ago.

But you do have to take MIPIM with a pinch of salt – the place of full of optimists!

Going forwards, I think the key sector will be residential, which has gone from being the poor relation. There is certainty because we are seeing institutional money looking at residential. We understand some 17 companies bid around £20m, predominantly cash, for River Crescent. So that’s several hundred million apparently available for top quality residential stock in Nottingham!

River Crescent was a one-off in terms of its quality, but not the location. In fact, there are better Waterside locations in Nottingham which are ready to rumble. 

So we have a real chance to get regeneration started in this cycle and what we must not do is interfere with that.

It is time to let the market get on with it.