A chaotic start in Fuji gave Fernando Alonso the chance he was hoping for after winning last years Japan Grand prix. While Kubica took the lead early on, Alonso used the first pit stop to pass Kubica with his decision to take less fuel and from then on, he led the race without ever feeling threatened again.

Lewis Hamilton wasn’t so lucky. He took the lead right at the start with a feisty move which was said to have put Raikkonen off the road on the first corner and that maneuver earned him a penalty.

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Saitama, a prefecture of Japan located on the of island of Honshū is according to this source becoming more foreigner friendly. A government initiated project which has drafted over 113 agents, prepares pamphlets that explain the rules of renting and living in an apartment in Japan in Chinese, English, Portuguese and Spanish as well as offers telephone advice on finding guarantors.

This “foreigner-friendly” policy is also helping boost business for the participating agents.

Here is a breakdown of the 479 enquires in 2007; 153 from Chinese (32 percent), 54 from Brazilians (11 percent) and 49 from South Koreans and ethnic Koreans (10 percent).

It is an interesting assessment of migration to this Japanese level.

_{Photo credit: airthru takashi [via flickr]}

Global economies have been harshly affected by three major factors; soaring food prices all over the world, the disruption in the financial and credit card markets within North America and the massive increase in energy prices for net consumers.

Despite all the impact these events have had on the global economy, the U.S. posted a 0.6% annualized rate of GDP growth in the first quarter this year. Naturally, all these factors affect the office market worldwide. CB Richard Ellis has released their latest report of Global Market Rents that indicates office rents and occupancy costs worldwide. Like last year, London’s East End is topping the list once again for being the most expensive markets.

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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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The number of new condominiums put on sale in the greater Tokyo area in September fell 19.8% from a year earlier to 5,202 units, the second consecutive drop in two months, the Real Estate Economic Institute said Tuesday.

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We took a look recently at the “Ups and Downs of the Indian Property market,” and felt a closer look at the situation was in order.

According to a recent report by the Financial Times, the real estate sector in India has seen tremendous growth over the past year; property prices have soared and the number and scale of projects has increased.

To fund these projects, developers are looking to investors, both domestic and foreign, through avenues such as listings on London’s Alternative Investment Market, domestic initial public offerings, private equity participation and the setting up of joint ventures.

The Indian government is now allowing foreign investment in townships, housing, built-up infrastructure and construction projects without prior approval from the exchange control regulator.

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The knock on effect of the US sub prime mortgage crisis seems to be having an effect on Japan’s housing market.

Japan´s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, released a report last week, stating that the seasonally adjusted annualized housing starts have been pushed down to a record-low of 720,000. Housing starts have shown steep year-on-year declines each month, with a 23.4 per cent drop in July followed by a 43.3 per cent plunge in August. Construction starts for owner-occupied homes dropped 21.6 per cent, while those for rental homes tumbled 51.3 per cent. Building starts for homes for sale fell 55.6 per cent, with condominiums falling 74.8 per cent.

In the third-quarter GDP estimates they had released by Wednesday, eight private-sector economic research institutes saw an average 9 per cent decline in housing investment, the largest drop since the 11.1 per cent slide in the April-June quarter of 1997, when the consumption tax was raised. A 9 per cent decrease in housing investment translates into a 0.3 per cent drop in quarterly GDP. “Construction investment cannot be ignored because it accounts for roughly a quarter of capital investment,” an analyst at NLI Research Institute said.

Many pundits are putting the bleak housing figures down to the sub-prime mortgage problem in the U.S, but there were a few positive comments coming from the Land and Industry Minister, Tetsuzo Fuyushiba, who said, “housing starts will head toward a recovery in one or two months.”

But some within the industry, including an official at the Japan Association of Architectural Firms, do not agree or expect a recovery this year. We are leaning this way also, because the US’s problems have a long way to go before reaching rock-bottom; the Japanese market is only just beginning to feel the effects.

Onigashimasu!

The Official website of The Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport

According to “Emerging Trends in Real Estate® Asia Pacific 2008,” just published by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo rank as the three most promising Asia Pacific cities in terms of real estate investment prospects.

David Sandison, a Tax Partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Singapore said, “It is expected that even greater amounts of capital will be flooding Asia Pacific real estate markets in 2008. The real challenge for investors will lie in finding the right assets against the backdrop of yield compression and scrutiny by regional governments and tax authorities.”

Shanghai topped the list for investment prospects, edged up from its second-place ranking last year. Singapore received the highest rating of any of the cities included in the report in terms of overall risk.

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Overseas Property Mall was cautiously optimistic about the Japanese real estate market when we last covered the subject in mid-May. In June, the FT reported, the J-REIT index dropped 12% because income from REITs was comparing unfavourably with the rising coupon on government bonds. Roko Izawa, director of structured finance ratings at Standard & Poor’s estimated that investors typically required an extra one percentage point on this kind of commercial investment in comparison to sovereign debt.

Other news on the property front was more encouraging with the land price index continuing to rise, averaging an increase of 3.65 in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka in the year to July.

More recently, the markets story in Japan has been in alignment with the performance in Europe and the US, with the Nikkei beginning to fall in the second half of July. Japanese investors do not share the gravity defying confidence of less experienced investors in Mainland China. Property companies shared in the general malaise but today has seen a marked recovery as investors looked at the sector’s fundamentals and market sentiment decided that the sell-off had gone too far.

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Like the Tokyo stock market, the Japanese property market has seen many false dawns since the country’s boom years ended at the start of the nineties. Now Japanese markets seem to have bottomed out finally and yet investors are still wary of disappointment.

In the context of property investments a lot of significance has been attached to Japanese real estate investment trusts (REITs). Given the moribund state of Japan’s bank credit over so many years REITs have been seen as a welcome way for property holders to obtain some leverage and to get their investments working as collateral in a way that the banks hadn’t seemed prepared to encourage. MoneyWeek comments that funds such as Japan Retail Fund and Japan Real Estate Investment Corporation can be bought through the likes of Barclays Stockbrokers. Writing in the Motley Fool, Dan Caplinger highlights that property prices tend not to correlate with share prices as an attraction for investors in Japan. However, it should be remember that Japanese property did correlate substantially with other types of investment during the 15-year recession.

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