18-year-old Daniel Radcliffe, star of the Harry Potter film series has just paid $4.3 million for a condo in New York. The condominium in question is a glass walled, fifth floor apartment in SoHo, a bohemian New York district.

It seems unlikely the film star will actually move in, as the apartment was almost immediately offered on the rental market by Gilmore Jacobs, a firm set up by Radcliffe’s parents in 2000 to maximize his earnings – asking rent $20,000 per month. Harry Potter joins a growing list of wealthy Brits buying in to the New York luxury condo market and taking advantage of the current weak dollar.

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Price per square foot can be an interesting approach to pricing real estate and we though it would be interesting to compare luxury condominium prices around the world to other types of space for sale. How much space in a luxury condominium would you get for £100,000? These prices are based on Knight Frank’s annual wealth report 2007 and may have changed slightly since then. These are the top ten contenders.

1. London

London currently tops the list. £100,000 buys you 43.5 square feet. Coincidentally, this is exactly the same footprint as the Ford Escape, an American SUV. So you can rest assured you will be able to park the car at this price.

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A special meeting of Aberdeenshire council overwhelmingly backed Donald Trump’s plans for a £1billion golf resort in north-east Scotland this week.

Mr Trump’s spokesman, Mr. George Sorial said he was “very pleased and very grateful” for the council’s backing and that the support was a “very big step in the right direction”. Mr. Sorial had warned previously that failure by the council to endorse the plans could jeopardize the entire scheme. The meeting was largely symbolic however – last week the Scottish government said it would have final say on the application after being previously rejected by a council committee on environmental grounds.

The council also voted to unseat Martin Ford as chair of the committee which, on his casting vote, rejected the application last time round.

The leader of the Scottish National party group on the council, Joanna Strathdee, said councilors needed to restore the business and wider community’s confidence in the planning process and show the world that north-east Scotland was open for business, environmental issues be damned.

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Fancy your own private island in Fiji? Now’s your chance. New Zealand estate agents, Bayleys Realty Group have three to choose from – all at less than £3 million each. Two of the Islands are in Fiji, the third in Marlborough sounds, NZ. Toberua Island sits two kilometres east of Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu, comes with 1.62ha of land and a 15-bure resort operation that has attracted a number of celebrity visitors recently. The island, with resort, is for sale for $3.9 million plus 12.5 per cent Fijian value added tax.

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Datuk Ab Hakim Borhan mayor of KL has a vision: Public information like building floor plans, application for business licenses, the filing of reports of accidents, bus schedules, or data on the city’s history – all at the push of a button or swipe of a barcode.

By using high-tech gadgets, all public housing officers would be able to scan a barcode installed at the building’s entrance and information such as the number of tenants, age and the duration of their tenancy will all be instantly available.

Tourists would no longer need tourist guides, as all buildings in Kuala Lumpur will have barcodes installed at the entrance whereby by just displaying a cell phones, information on the history of the building would be provided.

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Well, we know where we’re retiring to. Along with half the estate agents on the planet we suspect. Bahrain’s Ithmaar Bank has announced the planned development of a $1.6 billion island for the healthcare industry. Dubbed “Health Island,” development is due to start “soon”, said a bank official who refused to be named.

As well as medical facilities, hotels and apartment buildings are planned for the island, which will be located off the north coast of Bahrain near Muharraq.

Investors are eyeing the Gulf’s healthcare industry as the region’s population booms, and the government becomes less willing to provide the free healthcare it has in the past. Ithmaar is also working on a $1.2 billion beach resort and a $175 million hotel that complies with Islamic law also to be located in Bahrain.

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While global investors worry about the United States subprime crisis, the mounting capital outflow from the US to Asia is pumping up certain Asian property markets. One in particular, Singapore, has seen rents for private residential units rise by 31.2% from the middle of 2006 to 2007, and rental rates for prime office space occupied largely by foreign companies has risen 13.9% in the second quarter of 2007, reaching an average of S$10.33 (US$6.84) per square foot.

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Along with many British property investors, the Koreans know a bargain when they see one and the US property market is one of them at the moment. According to a report issued by the Korean Ministry of Finance and Economy, Korea’s overseas real estate buying increased in October from a month earlier due to a higher number of purchases in North America. Korean individuals and companies bought $96 million worth of land and houses in foreign countries last month, up from $86 million the preceding month. That brings the total value of the country’s overseas property buying from January to October to $968 million.

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