Having rabbited on about my travels in SE Asia until my colleagues were sick of it, I have been spent my first day back calling round to catch up on the latest industry news. Summer, traditionally a quiet time for the housing market, seems to have been something of a cleansing for many. Chatting with agents today, some are reporting a modest picking up in sales anbd transactions, and quiet hope for the autumn. Nonetheless, it doesn't seem that developers are out fo the woods yet - Barratt is the latest to be linked with a rights issue of up to £500m, following earlier cash calls from Taylor Wimpey, Berkeley, Bovis and Bellway.
And we all know that relations between landlords and tenants can be fraught, but this is a truely shocking story of the landlord who engineered the murder of his tenant for potentially holding up a £2m property deal. It's worth reading the Standard's version of this story here, where the convicted man says that despite being an "adulterer, liar and addicted to prostitutes and pornography", and now a convicted murdered, he is "not a bad person".
