Sweat the Assets

James Alexander Consultants are helping bring clarity to the challenges the asset portfolio’s of their clients bring.  Determining the relevance your owned or leased assets has to your business and its long term effect is fundamental to ensuring you have the correct profile in place.  Planning and managing the utilisation of those assets and their place in your business is our speciality.

James Alexander Consultants are expert in assessing your portfolio and, with you, determining a strategy to develop the correct balance of assets, their relevance and performance for you.  We develop, plan and implement the strategy, leaving you to focus on core activity and opportunity.

Our focus is to maximise the opportunity your built and land assets brings to your business whilst minimising the liabilities.  Get in touch with us to see how we can help you address lease related problems, acquisitions or disposals and help bring your portfolio into line for your business needs.

eMail us on innovation@jaltd.co.uk or see our contact page for our numbers.  We look forward to speaking with you.

Home Office?

Planning consents for the conversion of offices to residential buildings in the West End is on the increase.  Last year schemes totalling more that 2 million sq ft of conversion were granted, significantly up on the 202,000 sq ft in 2010.  Values of West End conversions are being quoted at the £3,000 per sq ft mark as against £2,000 per sq ft for office space and a number of office building are currently on the market to attract residential developers to drain even more for the pool of available commercial space.  It is thought the demand is, yet again in the London residential market, being driven by demand from “overseas buyers” with the kudos of Mayfair and St. James’s being too great an attraction to resist.

Westminster Council would appear to be keen on this latest trend, showing limited resistance to the movement to convert.  Indeed, new planning regulations may make it even easier to carry these out without the need for a change of use consent.  The trend will continue to put the squeeze on the West End commercial occupier, those creating and bringing wealth into the capital on a continuing basis.  Rental levels on refurbished space in Mayfair are already breaking the £100 per sq ft level and, with a narrowing range of choice as new developments hit an all time low, there will be continual upward pressure on the limited vacant space available.

This is all very well for the present as the Capital’s residential market continues to resist the national trend of stagnation and even regression in housing prices.  Where there’s a fast buck to be made, why not?  When the economy turns, (and it has to doesn’t it?) the time lag to address the requirement for more commercial accommodation will be significant. Apart from the obvious lack of acreage in the West End, and they’re not making any more of that, the timescales to prepare and develop either new build, conversions or refurbishment will mean that the shortage of available space will be with us for some time to come.

Not all is doom and gloom on this front, however.  There are those who welcome the return to original usage of some fine buildings, with period features once again being brought back to a life they were originally intended for.

Boux Who?

Dragon’s Den star and serial entrepreneur, Theo Paphitis is making preparations to open a new store of his lingerie & nightwear retail chain, Boux Avenue.  The store, the 11^th to open in under a year, will open in the Chapelfield shopping centre in Norwich.  Chapelfield Shopping Centre is owned by Capital Shopping Centres and the Norwich store is the 5^th in the chain to be housed in a CSC development, so something is obviously a good fit.  The other stores are situated in Thurrock, Manchester, Cardiff and Newcastle.

This is a superb opportunity for a gratuitous Valentines Day picture of a display of some of Boux Avenue’s products, but, on this occasion, I will resist.

Happy Valentines Day!

Social Media - Are you LinkedIn?

Social Media will continue to be big news in 2012.  As more people get to grips with their online presence and more businesses realise the potential for a new string to their marketing bow the battle for dominance in the social media marketplace will heighten.

There are over 200 social media platforms in existence and their individual customer bases are hard fought and hard won.  Many business professionals use LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) to profile themselves, their experience and expertise as well as that of their businesses.  LinkedIn is sometimes referred to as the “FaceBook for business” which is a point of view, not necessarily one I would subscribe to, but it certainly has similar aims and allows users to have a similar experience.  With over 10 million users, (I don't know how many property professionals are on!) it is certainly worth considering your usage of this medium.

Many come to LinkedIn from a fairly low start point in terms of familiarity with social media, and “tweaking” the application and your profile can make all the difference to your experience.  Here are my top 5 tips for improving your profile:

  

1. Profile picture: no matter how camera shy you may be, having your picture on your profile does make all the difference!  It should be appropriate to what you do and should also reflect who you are and, who you are now.  A 20 year old photo of you might look good and be your personal favourite, but isn’t going to hit the spot when someone meets you face to face!
2. Connection strategy: A tough one! Some people take the view that more is better, some becoming a LION (LinkedIn Open Networker) connecting with as many people as possible (some have 1,000s of connections) with a view that, at some point in the future there may be a useful contact in there somewhere.  Bit of a needle in a haystack approach.  Others prefer to make solid contacts with people they have met, already know have been recommended to or by and build a smaller base of known connections.  It comes down to personal preference, but leveraging your connection base is a key LinkedIn functionality.
3. Testimonials: A key descriptor of your worth to potential clients is the strength of testimonials on your profile.  You can ask for these, either specifically or reciprocally, and the way you approach this is dependant upon your relationship with the individual.
4. Headline: Your headline is the first thing that a potential client, contact or referrer will see.  LinkedIn will automatically default to your last job title, which might be fine, but does that say what you would want to say about yourself?  A concise strapline describing your skills and attributes would be far better.
5. Public Profile: LinkedIn sets an automatic name for your public profile, usually a less than helpful one!  Using your Profile Edit section you can replace this with one that more accurately reflects your name.  I reset mine to http://uk.linkedin.com/in/paulwyoungman

Feel free to get in touch for further thoughts and advice on this or any of our other Bog topics.