Hey everyone, it's Rob B here with Rob D and you are listening to the property podcast. There are

things that are holding investors back that absolutely shouldn't be. But there's also a list of things

that you should be concerned about as a property investor and some people aren't. So we're going to

go through both lists today to make sure you're not

wasting your time worrying about the wrong things and putting your focus on the things that

really matter. Welcome to the Property Podcast. Thank you for joining us. In case you don't know,

we run a business that buys more than £100 million worth of property every single year for our client. You can find out more about that at property hub.net slash invest. And as a result of doing that, we and our team hear all the worries that investors have. And so in this episode, we'll be splitting out those that actually matter from those that don't. All of that coming up. So it's time for our news story of the week now. And this news story has probably got

onto the radar for you because there's a lot happening in the world right now. But we still

want to bring you the industry news and keep you on top of what is happening in the world

of property. And this week, we need to bring you up to speed on what John Lewis have done, or to better phrase it, are not doing.

Because you may remember a few years ago, to some fanfare, John Lewis, announced that they were going into the world of Bill to Rent.

So not just satisfied with owning an upmarket supermarket and some wonderful stores, they decided they wanted

to provide homes as well. But Rob, it seems that after all the noise and fanfare, not a lot has actually

happened and may not happen ever at all. Yeah, to my great disappointment, because living

literally inside of John Lewis was my middle-class dream. But sadly, it looks like it's not going to

happen because they have scrapped plans to build a thousand rental homes, according to a story in The Guardian. And that was meant to be the first thousand of 10,000. But now, like you said, there's doubts about whether any of it is going to happen. What appears to be the case is that they had partnered with Aberdeen, who are a big asset management firm, to raise some of the funds for this venture. and they've not had a lot of interest. And

what the John Lewis spokesman has said is that we made this decision in a very different

financial environment, with more stable investment returns, lower borrowing costs and more

affordable costs to build homes. He goes on to say, unfortunately, the current climate,

higher interest rate, inflationary pressures, and a more cautious property market means the model

no longer meets the partnership's investment criteria. So that's bad news for me, Rob, bad news for

John Lewis and bad news for the government as well, because remember, Bill to Rent is completely

...