- Indian real estate sector ‘booming’ but ‘unorganised’ [India PR wire]
- Number of UK buy-to-let investors ‘will double within four years’ [The Independent]
- Concern over the Spanish property market as property stock prices drop [Times Online]
- House price inflation in UK up by 10.2% since April 2006 [Guardian Unlimited]
- Morgan Stanley Real Estate Makes Strategic Investment in Brazilian Residential Real Estate Company [PR Newswire]
- Wealthy Indians Buying thier own British empire [Daily Express]
- Russian Billionaire List Swells to 60 on Retail, Property Boom [Bloomberg]
- German property market in cyclical upturn – Swip [Investment Week]
- Brazilian property market ‘increasingly attractive’ [LSE]
- Russian Billionaire List Swells to 60 on Retail, Property Boom [Bloomberg]
- Online retirement property searches up by 399 per cent in the UK [Investment Week]
- Middle Eastern money invested in global real estate up 14 per cent to $13bn in 2006 [AME Info]
Archive for April, 2007
International Property News Beat
by Overseas Property Mall on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 in Property Industry News, Property News Summaries
High Housing Transaction Costs in Europe
by Overseas Property Mall on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 in International Real Estate Trends, Property & Real Estate Press Releases, Property Industry News
Overseas residential property-buyers beware! When you buy in Europe, you can pay up to 25% of the purchase price in round-trip costs, i.e., legal and other fees.
Punitively high round-trip transaction costs are incurred in Russia (25%), Bulgaria (24.9%), Italy (17%), France (16.3%), and Greece (15.5%) (i.e., the total cost of buying and selling a property, including all taxes and fees). Purchasers of new property often incur even higher costs, with additional VAT of 20% payable in some countries, according to a report released this week by the Global Property Guide .
International Property News Beat
by Overseas Property Mall on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 in Property Industry News, Property News Summaries
- Vietnam to have a big real estate group [Vietnam Net]
- South Africa’s rich investing in UK property [Money Web]
- Property values in Iskandar Development Region (IDR) South Johor, Malaysia set to rise [The Star Malaysia]
- Morgan Stanley Fund Buys ANA’s 13 Hotels in Japan for $2.4B [CP Online]
- Taiwan’s property market to attract as much as US$3.63 billion in investment in 2007 [China Post]
- Sun Innovation Eyes Macau Luxury Developments [China Hospitality News]
- Citigroup fund investing $400 mln in India property [Reuters]
- New Star Asset Management to launch its first global commercial property fund in May ’07 [Reuters]
- Four Seasons opens golf club in Dubai [TTN]
Billionaires in battle to buy London’s best homes
by Overseas Property Mall on Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 in London Property

It could be the stuff of World War III: Arabs, Americans and Russians trying to outfox each other and seize control of valuable land. A new terror crisis? A stormy session of the United Nations? No: this is a typical scene from central London’s super-wealthy and overheated housing market, where the rich and famous compete for the rarest of commodities – a perfect property in a prime location.
The whole of the London property market may be hot at the moment, with the average asking price nearly £379,000, according to property website Rightmove, but central west London – from Kensington and Holland Park in the west, through Bayswater to the north of Hyde Park, past the mews of Mayfair and Knightsbridge and down to Belgravia and Chelsea in the south – is at melting point.
According to Rightmove, in Kensington and Chelsea average property prices have soared by £120,000 to £1,329,878 in the past month and by £620,000 in a year.
There are two reasons for this extraordinary increase: the first is pure economics: there are far more wealthy buyers than there are homes for sale. The second is status: when the world’s wealthiest buyers want to add another prestigious address to their real estate portfolio, they look to Pimlico rather than Paris, to Marylebone instead of Manhattan.
‘London has what the world’s richest people want – security,’ says Charles Peerless of Winkworth estate agents. ‘It speaks the new universal language of English, has an easy air hub at Heathrow, good schools, a welcoming tax regime for foreign owners, and the world’s financial capital in the City.’
In the past year Peerless has visited Singapore, Dubai, the US and (three times) Shanghai, to explain London’s property market to wealthy would-be buyers.
‘The number of high net-worth individuals (HNWIs) is expanding more rapidly in North America than in Europe for the first time since 2001, while Singapore, South Africa, Hong Kong, India and Australia have seen the highest growth in HNWI numbers,’ explains Liam Bailey of Knight Frank, an estate agent that at any one time has about 300 of London’s most expensive homes on its sales books.
Chinese speculators eye property overseas…destination Malaysia
by Overseas Property Mall on Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 in China Property, International Real Estate Trends, Malaysian Property
Speculators from Wenzhou who contributed to the hike in real estate prices in China’s large cities, are moving their money to Malaysia.
A tour group is departing from Wenzhou for Kuala Lumpur and Genting on Friday. With most of the members being entrepreneurs and professional investors, the group looks like it will be doing more scouting property than sight-seeing.
Wenzhou is located in coastal Zhejiang Province, the richest area on the Chinese mainland, and many of the people there accumulated their wealth from manufacturing clothes and commodities such as lighters and drinking straws. They have invested in many cities across the country. Many have bought hundreds of apartments, spending tens of millions yuan. A few residential developments in Shanghai were bought in wholesale, such as The Xiangmei Garden and The Shimao Riverside Garden.
This time, the investors are going to Malaysia for their first overseas purchases because of the high return on investment, the Malaysian government invites of foreign investment and the convenience of getting there from China.
International Property News Beat
by Overseas Property Mall on Saturday, April 14th, 2007 in Property News Summaries
- How the Abu Dhabi property Market is hotting up [Property World ME]
- Cityscape to Capitalise on India’s $50 Billion Real Estate Market (IN) [Europe RE]
- UK is a top global buy-to-let location [AboutProperty.co.uk, UK]
- UAE real estate in danger of losing foreign capital [Gulf News, UAE]
- Singapore’s CapitaLand buys Shanghai property [Reuters]
- Singaporeans queue for days before condo launch; private property prices soaring [IHT]
- Record US$ 10.2 Billion FDI Drives Vietnam Real Estate [Albawaba]
- U.S. Investors Bullish on Indian Real Estate [Little India]
- Malaysia lures the second-home set [Reuters]
- ING Real Estate acquires 12,000-square metre retail park in Austria [ABC Money]
- 100s scammed over property sales sham in Dubai [7DAYS]
“Hot Real Estate with A Twist” – Rotating Tower Jumeirah Village, Dubai
by Overseas Property Mall on Friday, April 13th, 2007 in Abu Dhabi Property, Dubai, Dubai Property, Middle Eastern Property, New Development Alert, UAE Property
Finally got hold of a quality rotating tower video. This is an interesting piece from CNBC on good old Dubai featuring the rotating tower in Jumeirah Village….it’s a US$350m off plan 68-storey hotel condo & office tower designed by Italian architect David Fisher. Each floor individually rotates 360 degrees, constantly changing the shape of the building.
[youtube]yxCDsdXjK14[/youtube]
Updated June 25 2008
Here are more details on the project that is due to be complete in 2010
[youtube]1A8QaKGSM5M[/youtube]
Housing flu at the door step of France
by Overseas Property Mall on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 in European Property, French Property, International Real Estate Trends, Predictions, Property Industry News
House prices in France have skyrocketed by about 210% since 1995, making homeowners including 180,000 second home owning Brits well pleased to see their investments soar. But in recent times, the French market appears to have slowed down, from double-digit gains to about 7.2% in 2006 and a sudden fall to the negative at 0.6% in January this year.
Experts and economists attribute this pandemic to the already cooling US property market & economy. Jean-Paul Six, chief Europe economist for Standard & Poor’, was quoted as saying: “I think we will see falling house prices in France during the coming months and that is going to cause headlines. It is the delayed effect of rising interest rates, which have already gone up seven times to 3.75pc, and continue further up.”
In Europe, the boom has not only been restricted to France alone, but Britain, Spain, Ireland, Scandinavia, Holland and Italy have all enjoyed a housing boom of sorts in the past decade. The exceptions to this have been Germany and Switzerland, where the property market has been flat since 1996.
Spain is where the bubble is really evident, with soaring house prices; homeowners have witnessed a rise of about 270% in the last ten years. And with Spanish banks preference for floating rate mortgages or fixed ones, 93% of Spanish mortgages have been issued on this basis. France compared to this, looks as solid as a fortress because French banks normally restrict lending to a maximum of 75% LTV. Another factor to look out for is household debt to disposable income ratio which in France is a mere 65%, whereas in Britain a stout 146%, and Spain a slimmer 115%.
What has emerged from this French property scare is the glut of housing in France, in part due to an overheated construction industry that could well impact negatively on The French property market. Anyone for Croatia? Read more on Telegraph.
International Property News Beat
by Overseas Property Mall on Wednesday, April 4th, 2007 in Property Industry News, Property News Summaries
- Northern Ireland house prices up 57.6% in a year [AboutProperty.co.uk]
- French housing bubble set to burst [Telegraph]
- Changes in Mexico’s property laws lure foreign investors [The Herald, Mexico]
- Australian property funds turn away from the US to tripled European investments [Bloomberg]
- The European property bubble begins to hiss [Money Week]
- Tri Investments seeking to raise new investment for its Euro Residential Property fund [Investment Week]
- Fraser & Neave Singapore, plans to venture into residential property development in Indian [Daily Times, Pakistan]
- Japan’s real estate starting to boom [Bloomberg]
- Property in Bulgaria – From Laughable to Fastest-Growing Market in Europe [Novinite]
How The World’s Richest City Spends its Money
by Overseas Property Mall on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 in Abu Dhabi Property, International Real Estate Trends, Middle Eastern Property, UAE Property
Abu Dhabi, an obscure – yet substantial – oil producer in the Middle East is seeking to take the world by storm in it’s largest up scale venture.

The precedent has already been set by it’s neighbouring city, Dubai, which became a global commercial and tourist hub when it’s oil supply began running low creating a necessity for wealth replacement. Part of Dubai’s step to recovery included the $1 billion Burj Al Arab hotel, looser land sales laws, and what will become the world’s tallest building among other things. Although many believe that Dubai was built too quickly and urgently, it continues to be a stronghold in the Middle East and is giving Abu Dhabi a good run for its money.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan, the 46-year-old crown prince of Abu Dhabi, has high hopes of putting his little city on the world map. Considered the richest city in the world, each of Abu Dhabi’s 420,000 citizens are worth $17 million. Over $1 trillion is invested worldwide by this one city alone, and an unfathomable amount of money is being put right back into its soil.
Etihad Airways, one of Abu Dhabi’s first projects along with its $6.8 billion airport expansion, included an $8 billion order with Airbus. Although it covers all major destinations in the globe, the successful airline industry of Dubai makes Abu Dhabi’s seem pointless and so far apparently unprofitable. The immaculate Emirates Palace hotel was soon to follow with suites costing between $1,000 and $10,000-per-night. The practicality of the hotel is debatable as it seems to serve as a landmark rather than a place of lodging. However, with popularity being the primary goal for this city, it serves it’s purpose well.
The most crucial change in Abu Dhabi has been the relaxing of it’s property ownership and selling laws to allow foreigners 99-year leaseholds and giving citizens the ability to sell land. Native investors that have settled in Dubai are now returning to their home city in a bid not to miss this ‘gold rush’.
Abu Dhabi’s most recent endeavour is Saadiyat Island (meaning island of happiness in Arabic), a glowing $30 billion island with two golf courses, 29 hotels and enough housing accommodation for 150,000 people. Numerous other features on the island make it the ideal tourist destination.
Will the world notice Abu Dhabi’s gigantic strides in creating an empire of wealth? Only time will tell, and perhaps one day Abu Dhabi will be to the Arabia what Tokyo is to Japan. Read more on CNNMoney.



