Arthur's Fery-tale ending?

23:18Felicity Hannah:Frances, have we sort of moved on a bit from the war in Ukraine? Is that having any kind of ongoing economic impact, aside, of course, from the terrible human cost that it's creating in Ukraine? um it's not an obvious economic cost it's more this kind of long-running drag the cost of living crisis we had those big oil price spikes big energy price spikes back in 2022 we haven't seen those again but they all contributed to this general feeling that people have now that they're getting poorer um things just are getting more expensive and it's all part of that So it's more a long term drag rather than, oh, my goodness, this is awful.

24:07Ukraine also did rather disappear from the news, which was unfortunate because actually Ukraine has been doing rather well, as Shanti says. And there is a real prospect, I think, of an end to this war.

24:22And that would be a good thing. And it would be nice. I think we should be looking to bring an end to it because actually an actual defeat for Putin would, I think, do an awful lot to improve the sense of security in Europe generally.

24:42Felicity Hannah:Interesting thoughts. We're going to talk about the World Cup in just a minute. But Harriet, while I got you on, I was thinking about you when I read an article on the BBC website this week about a trend for divorce rings. So women taking their engagement rings, which quite often have diamonds on and having them kind of repurposed. And instead of locking them away in a box, having them kind of reset into a ring that they then wear on their middle finger. I wondered if that's if that's anything that you've come across yet. Oh, yeah, we've been doing that for years. Brilliant. we love it glamorous recycle and actually not just divorce rings I had a fantastic customer came to me about 20 years ago with all of the jewelry a big pile of gold jewelry that in her words her lying cheating boyfriend had given her over the years I won't use all the words don't use all the words and she said I want you to melt it down whilst I watch into a new ring to represent my confidence and my independent style so we did this big, thick, chunky ring with Roman numerals around it with her birth date on.

25:49And interestingly, she still wears it now, even though she has come back to us with the right man for an engagement ring and wedding ring and so on since. She still wears that ring to remind her that she can make her own decisions.

26:00Felicity Hannah:I love that. And then you get what you were saying about jewellery sort of representing so many different things. Right. Let's talk about it. Let's fit it in. How are we feeling? At least England listeners, how are we feeling? You're welcome to get in touch from across the UK but you might not have quite the same nail-biting passion but yes, England, Norway quarterfinal of the World Cup in Miami, getting very, very serious now. Are you heading to the pub? Maybe you are on the sofa, maybe you're behind the sofa, maybe you're ignoring it completely because you feel it's just been going on a bit too long now.

26:36Felicity Hannah:Aliza Sadiq has been speaking to people in Salford about their plans and how Saturday's match might play out.

27:09Felicity Hannah:but I would have loved to go watch the games in person that would have been amazing. Well I'm trying to decide where to go because a few of my friends are going to diecast to watch the game but it costs£25 a ticket so that was really putting me off because you don't it's not a drink included or anything it's just£25 to watch the game and that is a big put off for me. So you never thought about traveling to the states to watch? No definitely not I don't have that kind of money. I'm predicting 3-1. Okay. I think so. I'm hoping we got a decent ref because we can't really afford to lose like Bellingham and all that if they get a yellow.

27:42Felicity Hannah:OK. So because otherwise Argentina will not be nice to us in the semis. I'm a big Liverpool fan. Oh, right. But it's the times that they're on have just been like thrown at us off. Is that putting you off going out to the pub as well? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just too late, isn't it? The one guy there saying predicting 3-1, he didn't say to who. So there's a lot riding on this. Not many games left in the tournament now. Get in touch. 85058 how you're feeling where you're going to be watching the match if you're going to be watching the match panel we need to talk about the business news of it and we will but I'm just curious how you're feeling are you loving it do you have the hype do you really really not care Frances I feel like you might not be caught up in the hype I'm really not I'm not really a football girl to be honest so although I was you know I kind of know what's going on.

28:38I follow it actively and I certainly don't sit up to watch the matches.

28:43Felicity Hannah:No, I mean, I could tell there was more passion in your voice talking about the oil price than in that answer there. Shanti, will you be watching? Yeah, I'll watch it. I think I get interested once it's knockouts and I think it affects the mental health of so many of the people I interact with that I've got to care. Yeah. Yeah. Harriet, have you just got to care or do you really, really care? um I I quite like these big sporting events like the World Cup and Wimbledon um but do I really care I'm not sure I really do but uh I have to say you do sort of get swept up in into it even if you're not massively into football at this kind of point when things are going well and you're sort of thinking oh you know maybe maybe there is a chance every year you think well what if we did win you know people are talking about oh would there would there be another bank holiday what happens and you know everyone gets very excited lots of optimism which is really good.

29:36Felicity Hannah:Which is really good isn't it and Francis tell us if England did go all the way and England did win and there was this bank holiday that's kind of been mooted what kind of economic impact does that have? Are they generally good or bad overall? Because obviously they're good for some sectors. Bank holidays are generally fairly bad economically because shops shut and people don't. But one like this, I think, might be quite good because pubs would do very well. Pubs would do very well, wouldn't they, Shanti? And perhaps that's why we've seen Hospitality UK kind of very, very keen for this to happen.

30:21Felicity Hannah:And I suppose for England to keep on scoring because the longer they're in, the bigger the impact for them? Yeah, you know, grocery sales go up, pub sales go up. I think there's that element of people are generally happy. They, you know, they tend to splurge a bit more. I think the most interesting kind of economic thing here is the amount that ticket sales they've managed to do. So Qatar was about$950 million. This World Cup in the US has been$3 billion. And it's just, I think it's because it's spread over a larger market than you've ever seen a World Cup, like a larger geographic area, more people, you know, and that's enabled them to charge these, you know, outlandish ticket prices.

31:04But, you know, you look at the stadiums and it's full, the markets, you know, people have paid. So I think that's kind of the most interesting thing.

31:12Felicity Hannah:You've also, you've been looking at the economics of the sticker books that kind of go a lot, hand in hand with this. we're very into sticker books in my office um but no i think the interesting thing with those i mean yes there's way more stickers because you've got more teams so if you want to get all of them it's like 980 but you know the way they do the books like you can get like quite a lot done cheaply but then it gets really expensive to finish the book so like we estimated to actually finish the book, you'd need to buy 600 packs, which would cost you£4 ,200. So the better answer, though, is to trade.

31:51You know, you can get a little bit away buying the books and then you've got to trade. Otherwise, you're just going to be, you know, you're sifting through these stickers forever. And no, we haven't finished our book, but we are trying.

32:01Felicity Hannah:Got need. We can crack on with that later in the day. Fabulous. Well, thank you so much to our Friday panel. Harriet Kelsall, Shanti Kellerman, stick around. Lots more to talk about. Francis, this is where we let you crack on with your before the heat hits early morning on the Friday. Thank you very much for being with us. Pleasure as always. Thanks very much. That's Francis Coppola, the independent economist. A couple of your messages before we move on. Jane in Oxford says on the football, I'll be listening on Five Live radio. Commentary beats the TV. You really get the atmosphere. Well, of course, Jane, I would agree.

32:35Felicity Hannah:And Jackie, interesting story, Harriet. You're going to like this. She says, I had my engagement ring made into earrings. My ring was two diamonds and I had them split up into two pieces. I wear them all the time. I even got cash back for the gold part of the ring, which was even better. Happy hot morning to you all. Thank you very much indeed for that.

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33:56Felicity Hannah:Wake Up To Money with Felicity Hanna. Good morning. If you're just joining us on Wake Up To Money, then welcome to the show. Loads of you have already been in touch on all the many and varied topics we've been chatting about so far. Sandy in North Berwick says, if England win the World Cup, you deserve a public holiday. However, I've written to the Scottish government requesting a day of mourning in Scotland. Thanks for that, Sandy. And Martin in Merseyside says that he's up, he's out for a run in the mist for two reasons. It's cooler. And he's also got to run to the park for the work van because someone parked across his drive last night.

34:30Felicity Hannah:But he also says he's one of the only drivers on Sunday as the rest will be hung over. So it's a media blackout for him. He says, we'll watch it charging the van in the morning. Thank you very much for that. Loads of you also getting in touch on new builds, whether there are enough new builds in your area, whether there should be more, whether there should be less. We're going to talk about that now because, oh, 85058, if you want to join in the chat, which I want you to. But let's talk about new builds because the number of new build housing developments, new build homes coming to market is at the lowest level since 2017.

35:04Felicity Hannah:This is according to new data out from the property search website Rightmove this morning. Remember, of course, the government has a target to build one and a half million homes over the course of this parliament. This suggests that perhaps that might be slightly tricky. Let's talk to Paul Rickard, who's chief executive of the affordable housing developer Pocket Living. Paul, good morning. Good morning. So you build around 300 affordable homes each year. Just explain what's going on then. Why Rightmove might be seeing the number kind of dropping down a bit? Because people want homes. The government want there to be homes.

35:43Felicity Hannah:It suggests that the demand must be there. Why would we see a slump? They do. And the news isn't disappointing. Sorry, it's very disappointing, but it's not unexpected. And you're right, the aspiration for home ownership is absolutely there. Our own study that we did in London, 84 % of people still want to buy a home, but they view it as out of reach. And if we look at housing delivery, then there's two aspects to this. On one side, they're just too expensive for developers to be able to build. And on the other side, people can't afford or are choosing not to purchase them. So from a developer perspective, over the last five years, we've seen build costs go up 40%.

36:23We've seen labour costs go up 23%. we've seen regulation increase, we've seen finance costs double, we've seen planning costs and planning fees increase. So if you add all of that up and look across the country, in only about a third of the country is housing viable. And by viable, I mean you can sell it for more than it costs to build.

36:49Felicity Hannah:Is part of the problem sort of what's getting built? Because somebody who doesn't give their name, they've messaged to say where I live near Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh. All that's getting built is student accommodation. That way developers aren't obliged to provide a percentage of social housing. Students pay no council tax and get free travel across the city and Scotland in general needs to be sorted soon. And they say social housing should be government funded and perhaps the home builders should pay a levy towards funding social housing. I think there's two aspects to that. The first is what do we need as homes in this country?

37:24And unfortunately, we're not in the position where we can allocate and prioritise different housing types. We need housing of every single type. We need later living. We need student. We need social. We need private. The reason you might be seeing an increase in student housing is because it's so difficult for a developer to build anything. they will build the homes that are more profitable. And over the last five years, it has been more profitable to deliver particular types of housing, including students.

37:55Felicity Hannah:Somebody who literally gives their name as a non says two obvious inconvenient truths. One, it's not the job of private companies to fix social housing problems. Two, if it's not economic to build them, then the government is a major cause of this. Do you think that the government could do more? Because, for example, Rightmove and Barrett-Redrow, the major house builder, they're calling this morning for stamp duty to be completely axed for first time buyers to stimulate the market. Do you agree that this is an issue with demand, with people not being able to afford homes rather than an issue in supply?

38:29The two are linked. You can't get away from that. The more homes that are sold, the more homes developers build. But if we look at that demand side, absolutely. And there are four main things that are stopping people from being able to buy a home. Most of them will be aware of the deposit level, the simple cost. Can you afford to buy the home? Then there's the mortgage availability. There are a lot of people trapped in rental accommodation where they're paying month on month more in rent than it would cost them in a mortgage to buy a property. And then last of all, this sentiment. If people don't feel confident in their lives in the world, then they defer those big decisions.

39:06If we look at stamp duty in particular as one of the recommendations that's been raised in that Rightmove report, that's a bit of a mixed picture, actually. And that's got a big geographical variation. Pocket homes, for example, there is no stamp duty because of the price point. Within London, you'll have eight in 10 people paying stamp duty, first time buyers. Out of London, it's much less. I think there's a bigger question around whether stamp duty in its entirety should be abolished to free up and unlock the entire housing ecosystem, including encouraging downsizing. Because in this country, we don't have enough homes, but we do have enough beds.

39:44Felicity Hannah:That's a really, I mean, that's a complex question, isn't it? Shanti Kellerman, co-chief investment officer at Seven Investment Management, still with us. Shanti, this was the kind of thing that was mooted. I think last year there was some sort of pressure on the chancellor. Maybe stamp duty could be completely re-thunk. But this is not necessarily a government that's got the space to make such a significant change to what is a major tax raiser. Yeah, I think if they wanted to change it, they'd need some sort of transition mechanism to protect people who might have paid a bunch of money. and then the next day it's zero.

40:24I think abolishing stamp duty and then revamping the property taxes probably makes sense in the long term. Stamp duty kind of forces people to stay put. The other trend you have in this country is we spend far more on maintenance and upgrades than we do on new builds relative to Europe or the United States. And part of that's linked to stamp duty. It encourages people to stay in place, to remodel, to do the extension rather than just move to a new home because often, you know, for that extra stamp duty cost of 10, 15, 20 grand, you could just do extension on your house or, you know, or something else or fix the kitchen.

40:59So I think it's something that needs to be looked at. And it also has the impact of making people more mobile, which helps with employment markets.

41:08Felicity Hannah:Which is something that, yeah, that Paul was touching on. Thank you, Shanti. Paul, we've had a message from Tony in Lincoln who says, I think the government should take all the dormant building sites, such as one in Lincoln, where there are many hundreds of houses planned for building but very little progress, and make the developers build the houses and hand them over to the councils. The councils can pay for those homes and rent them out, recouping their money. The money that would be saved by moving people from expensive private rentals into these new council-owned properties would, over a very few years, pay for the cost of this takeover.

41:37Felicity Hannah:It's an interesting question, isn't it, Paul? I think there's quite often a sense among our listeners that perhaps this kind of land banking is going on, that perhaps developers are kind of sitting on land and not building. But I get the sense from what you've been saying so far that you don't think that's the case. It is not the case. I wish it were the case. I wish we had that luxury, especially within the SME sector. As soon as you buy a site, the clock's ticking. You've borrowed money to buy that site, so it's costing you. So the land banking is a bit of a myth. those empty sites are an interesting one and i think that is a good challenge you've got a lot of empty sites because construction companies have gone bust on average we're losing 4 000 companies each year within the construction space so those sites you're looking at they may be people that are down tools but there's not a single developer in this country that doesn't want to bring the building forward both because they see the need for homes in this country and because it costs them money to leave them vacant.

42:38Where you do have those sites and you will see them, they just can't be brought forward because the sums don't work. What you could do there is empower the local authorities with government funding to be able to unlock those sites. And Homes England and similar organisations are doing exactly that.

42:53Felicity Hannah:So people want to buy homes, builders want to build homes, but the market is just not quite functioning. That's right. And then how can we bring the cup home if there's no homes to come home to? Is devolution going to help? Is Andy Burnham assuming, and I think we can all assume now that he's going to be the next Labour leader and therefore the next prime minister and his plans to sort of decentralise power? Is that what's needed? I think it might. The challenge with devolution is that house delivery is a national issue. This isn't localised. There's only about a third of the entire country where we can viably build homes.

43:32So what I would say on the devolution front is some of the powers given to the London mayor have been helpful in delivering homes. And that's a good sort of roadmap for further devolution. And on that note, I would say it's important that we don't forget about London in that devolution piece. We're aiming to deliver 350 ,000 homes a year. London's target is 88 ,000. That's a quarter of all new homes that need to be delivered. And the economic benefit and social benefit of homes is staggering. It's one of the largest drivers of the economy. So if we want to address the cost of living crisis, make people feel better, we've got 2000, so 2 million employees in the construction space.

44:14Construction, building new homes is the way to do that.

44:17Felicity Hannah:Well, the government, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has commented on this. They told the FT last month, we're building the homes this country needs and have launched a comprehensive mortgage guarantee scheme that will help restore the dream of home ownership. And they said that new housing starts have increased by nearly a quarter compared to the same time last year, thanks to what they say is our bold reforms to get Britain building and support developers to weather geopolitical pressures. So there you go. Paul, thank you so much for starting off your day early with Wake Up to Money.

44:47Felicity Hannah:We appreciate it. A pleasure. Thank you. Paul Rickard there, Chief Executive of the affordable housing developer Pocket Living. Harriet is also still with us. Harriet Kelsall, founder and chair of Harriet Kelsall Bespoke Jewellery. And I believe you've got your own kind of quirky new build experience going on right now. Oh, yeah, that's right. I'm in the middle of a building project because I'm turning my detached home into two semi-detached homes, with the ambition that I'm going to be able to hopefully sell one of them and pay off my mortgage. But because even though it's an existing dwelling, the half that I'm, you know, the older part is treated as the existing building.

45:27And actually, the separate semi-detached building is being treated as a new build by the council. So it has to meet all of the new build regulations, even though it's an existing structure. And everything's so expensive these days compared to last time I did a build project just a year or two ago. And it's not just labour, but the materials have gone up massively. You know, things like linking to the utilities as a new build, planning requirements, surveys, engineers, everything is massively more expensive than it was. And also the red tape, I think, is really holding everything up in the construction industry.

46:05It must be holding up all kinds of projects.

46:08Felicity Hannah:And if it's holding up my small building project. But you are playing a role in that 350 ,000 home target a year. Harriet doing one of them. So, yeah, thank you for telling. I'm amazed that you can be on Wake Up To Money when you're in the middle of a project like that. It's such a huge chunk of work. Martin in Swindon says people are waiting for interest rates to fall and stabilise. Not going to happen while Trump keeps bombing Iran and stuff like that. Thank you very much for your thoughts. There is still time. Get in touch. 85058 this morning. But let's get excited about a whole different ball game.

46:43Felicity Hannah:Tomorrow, Arthur Ferry will become only the fifth British man in the Open era, so since 1968, to reach a Wimbledon singles semifinal. Oh, what days these are for Arthur Ferry. Three sets to no, six, four, seven, six, six, nine. The wild card, the British wild card in the semifinals of Wimbledon. Well, 24-year-old Ferry, who grew up just around the corner from Wimbledon, was ranked 114th in the world before the tournament started and only qualified by being given a wild card. Now he has been propelled into the spotlight. I heard that Murray Mound was being temporarily dubbed Arthur's Seat for this one.

47:27Felicity Hannah:Prize money sponsorships inevitably on the way for him. Someone who knows all about the often gruelling career of a tennis player who's aiming for the big time is Conor Nyland, who joins us now. Conor, good morning. Good morning. How are you? Well, I'm delighted to be talking to you because you know this from sort of every angle. You were a professional tennis player between 2005 and 2012. At one time, the number one ranked Irish player. You reached 129 globally, but you've also written the book on this. You're the author of The Rackets, on tour with tennis's golden generation and the other 99%.

48:04Felicity Hannah:So you really, you understand kind of exactly what Arthur Ferry is kind of experiencing and going through at the moment. Just explain why it's so significant for a wildcard to make it to the semifinals. Yeah, it's huge. It's a massive difference in exposure, obviously, but also in prize money. So Arthur will make, he goes out at 130 today against Alexander Zverev. His take-home prize money if he loses today is£900 ,000. Wow. And he will have made probably a fraction of that so far in his whole career. So I finished my pro career and I'd made just under$250 ,000, but that was over the course of seven years.

48:51So you're talking 30, 40 grand a year. So I think the prize money, though, has improved a lot in Wimbledon. So I played main draw, I qualified and lost first round in 2011. And my prize money check for losing in the first round in 2011 was£11 ,500. And if I lost this year in the first round, my take-home prize money would have been£80 ,000. So in fairness, the Grand Slam prize money has stepped up a lot in the last 10, 15 years. And that's been a lot to do with a lot of moaning from people like me and people who are more powerful than me. and Yannick Sinner and Arianna Sebelenka have done a really good job of that, even the last two weeks, talking about limiting press conferences to 15 minutes.

49:34So there has been a pressure put on the Grand Slams over the last number of years to try and improve that, which has been, I think, positive.

49:41Felicity Hannah:And prize money has been a big issue, hasn't it, in this particular Wimbledon? But tell me then, is tennis lucrative? Is it something you make money out of? Or is it something that really actually, when you think about all the time and the effort and the travel and the expense and the training, really, really, really only the sort of the biggest players can actually make some decent cash from? Yeah, that's the problem is when you flick on the TV on Sunday and Yannick Sinner or Novak or Arthur or Alexander or the two Czech girls, Noskova and Muzhava are sitting there on Sunday evening with a cheque for£3.6 million.

50:19You think tennis is, you know, the gravy train. You're all loaded. yeah yeah you're all loaded what are you complaining about and then when you're at somebody like me who's maybe just outside the top 100 you're losing money you're losing money every year so it kind of falls off a cliff outside the top 100 and that sort of is is what I guess my point to earlier that Grand Slam prize money has improved a lot which it has that that is still benefiting the guys in the top 100 the guys who are playing in the main draws of Wimbledon and Australian Open but the problem is for me the issue really at hand is the guys between 100 and 300 in the world at the challenger level and they are um they're losing money and they're still okay everyone's got their own definition of world class but they're certainly international class tennis players they're in the top two or three in their country a lot of times certainly in the top 10 and it's a massive global sport and they're not able to make um a decent living out of it um Whereas you look at your team sports, like soccer, rugby, cricket, even golf, they have much more earning opportunities for more players.

51:24And if you look at golf, they obviously have the PGA Tour, but they also have the European Tour. There's the Sunshine Tour, the Asian Tour. There's a number of different opportunities. Whereas in tennis, it's this one tour and this is one bottleneck of players all trying to get the same thing. And it's extremely competitive. So I think it's been great that the Grand Slams have improved. But I think probably the issue is more prize money at the challenger level. And I think how we do that is the Grand Slams actually make a profit. The LTA make a surplus. They make 30, 35 million pounds from Wimbledon every year, which obviously goes back to the LTA in grassroots, which is great.

52:06But I think there should be some more money siphoned off for the guys who are a little bit outside the top.

52:10Felicity Hannah:And when you think, I suppose, about the dedication, the effort that it takes, the constant work to be in those sort of top two or three players in your country and in the top couple of hundred in the world, it does seem strange that it could be so financially challenging alongside the physical and the sporting challenge. What were the times in your career that you wanted to give up because of the financial situation? Have you thought about it? Yeah, I mean, a lot. I mean, it was difficult to justify it at times. And I had a private sponsor, which I relied on for a couple of years when I finished college in the States.

52:45But like Arthur, I was in college in California and then went on the tour. But, you know, for the first couple of years, at least I wasn't I wasn't even breaking even. And then you're relying and you're beg, borrowing and stealing. And you don't feel like a legitimate pro, even though you might be 200 in the world. You feel like you're a bit of a charity case.

53:03Felicity Hannah:It's amazing, isn't it? we're almost out of time and I just want to really briefly if you can touch on what what will this mean then for Arthur Ferry and for sponsorships oh it's huge I mean I remember playing Djokovic at Centre Court US Open and all of a sudden getting um getting sponsors contacted me asking could I wear a patch on my sleeve and you know they're offering more money than I'd made in three years on the tour so Arthur's life has changed changed forever probably um which is great to see it's great to see those stories and wild cards you know capitalizing so So wishing him all the best.

53:35Hopefully see him on Sunday.

53:36Felicity Hannah:Thank you very, very much indeed. Connor Nyland there. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you, Harriet Kelsol. Thank you, Shanti Kellerman. Thank you for all your messages this morning. It's been a really, really busy one for us. Really appreciate your thoughts. That's it for Wake Up To Money. Wake Up To Money from BBC Five Live.

54:04Thank you.

55:03.com.

55:09We'll be right back.