With all the doom and gloom surrounding the property markets, we felt it was about time to take a look at those markets that have remained robust and healthy throughout the current credit crunch. So here are five markets that have consistently performed well, regardless of the ups and downs seen recently.

Manhattan, New York

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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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Record prices are still being achieved in the luxury condominium market all round the world. This is a selection in no particular order. Some have yet to be build and have sold purely on spec.

The Marq, Singapore.

The price of a condo in Singapore crossed the $5,000 per square foot this year when a single unit sold for $31 million. The first phase of the “invitation only” release all sold within a few weeks of release. Condos in The Marq cover an entire floor and include a 15 meter lap pool with every unit. No release date has been set yet for the next phase of the development. The bulk of the purchasers are said to be foreign.

The Time Warner Center, NYC.

In 2003, the Time Warner building in Manhattan broke all existing US records, selling a single condominium for $45 million – unfinished. Time Warner Center is one of the largest, most expensive multi-use developments constructed in New York City. This building houses the world headquarters of a major corporation; 211,00 square feet of additional office space; three jazz performance halls; almost 200 luxury condominiums; a high-end retail mall “The Palladium”; and a 251-room, five star Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Although rumors of an agreed sale of the Pierre’s penthouse at over $50 million may soon dwarf this.

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London is supposed to be one of the most expensive cities in the world, but, having recently read a report on the cost of a parking space in Manhattan and reports of people paying upwards of £500 per month in Tokyo, I thought a comparison would be in order.

According to the New York times, this woman is cursing herself for not taking advantage of an opportunity to buy a parking space outside her loft apartment at $165,000 when she had the chance. A few months later, the spaces were changing hands for $225,000. Also according to The Times, the AVERAGE cost of a parking space is $165,000. Average.

London spaces have changed hands for as much as £250K but here are a few London bargains I found.

For the measly sum of £80,000 one can buy a garage on the Fulham Rd, SW6.

Craigslist also have a few bargains available, and this one jumps out. Considerably cheaper than the spot in Fulham. “I am selling my parking space in Whitechapel. It is on a private gated road next to the London Hospital. It is just outside the congestion charge zone so is very convenient for the City etc. It has been valued at £25K but I am keen to sell quickly.”

Sounds like a bargain to me. Although they might consider the use of an Estate agent to jazz the sales pitch up a little. “Bizou parking space in sought after neighborhood. Minimalist black, with no yellow in sight. Handy lack of walls makes for easy car positioning. Good renovation project. Might suit a young couple with small family.”?

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The saying “One man’s riches means another man’s poverty” rings truer than ever in today’s international real estate market. Price fluctuations, along with changes in demand and supply in different parts of the world are creating interesting representations of the value of money. Take for instance, what one million pounds sterling – approximately $1.9 million in US currency – can purchase.

In Edinburgh, you could buy an enormous town house boasting multiple reception rooms with expensive crown mouldings and chandeliers. Likewise, Oxfordshire offers you seven bedrooms, over six acres of land, and gardens.

Just east of Oxfordshire places you in London, where purchasing a home is an entirely different story. Because of a 28.6% growth in prices due to a combination of increasing demand and diminishing supply in prime real estate, the best locations in London could only give you 600 to 1,000 square feet. This increase in property value is largely due to wealthy foreign buyers from countries such as China, Russia, India and the Middle East. Instead of exchanging one piece of London real estate for another, these buyers come from outside the country, meaning the purchase of one property does not release the availability of another which ultimately drive prices upwards.

Despite this drastic difference in the UK, the value of the British sterling is not to be underestimated when taken overseas to the American continents, where foreign buying is not as rampant. Prices of apartments with dazzling Manhattan skyline views are down by a startling 34% from five years ago, giving you over 1,000 feet of luxury for $2 million. Prime locations in South America offer breathtaking island retreats with more rooms and luxuries than can be imagined.

In Angra dos Reis, a Brazilian city south-west of Rio de Janeiro with a beautiful coastline of over 300 islands, luxury villas are also a target for investment because of standard features like 8+ bedrooms, two saunas, swimming pool, waterfall, jacuzzi, barbecue, private beach and an ocean front pier. Like Brazilian broker Judice de Araujo Esteves says, “buying outside of traditional European and North American real estate markets is certainly more risky, but if they invest correctly, they can have better profits. This happens in all developing countries.”

The end result shows that moving out of the popular well-known areas of real estate and looking into carefully chosen emerging markets, opens up opportunities of high returns in the long run, which would only be a matter of time for parts of South America, Eastern Europe, and the far east set to become the next “London” in real estate.
Read more about this over at Forbes.

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New York’s Fifth Avenue has retained its top position as the world’s most expensive shopping street in the world, according to Main Streets Across the World 2006, with unit rental on Fifth Avenue commanding an average of of US$1.35m per 1,000 sq ft/93 sq m per annum.

THE WORLD’S MOST EXPENSIVE SHOPPING STREETS

Source: Cushman & Wakefield

It’s better to value homes by floor space than the number of rooms, says Paula Hawkins

IN A NATION as obsessed with house prices as our own, there can be few homeowners who do not have at least a vague idea of what their property is worth. If asked to put a value on our homes per square foot, however, many of us would not have a clue. But pricing per square foot — or per square metre — is the standard in most other markets, and as more foreign buyers come to the UK it is becoming more common to think about property values in terms of floor space rather than the number of rooms.

“When you buy a property at the top end of the market — say a flat in Sloane Square — you will usually see the size of the property quoted in square feet,” says Joe Martin, of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). But what you do not see is the price per square foot. “It has always bemused me: why we do not value property per square foot the way that everyone else does,” Martin says. “We have this fixation with the number of bedrooms, which I believe has had an adverse effect on the property market. It has led to us building smaller houses with lots of small rooms.”

Moreover, rooms in private homes are the smallest of all. “It is one of the quirks of history that social housing is generally bigger than private housing, because there are minimum standards for the size of rooms in social housing,” Martin says. The Parker Morris Standards, which were introduced for all council housing in 1969, state that there should be at least 33 sq m for the first occupant of a house, and an average 13 sq m for each additional person.

No such standards apply to private housing, however, which has meant that the rooms in our houses have been getting smaller and more numerous. According to RICS data, a typical house built today is 55 per cent smaller than one built before 1920. House size has not changed a great deal since the 1980s, but the number of rooms we squeeze into our homes is rising, due to the popularity of en suite bathrooms, utility rooms and home offices.

When you do take a look at the price of property per square foot, it becomes clear just how expensive UK housing is. The estate agent CBRE Hamptons International has found that, per square foot, Central London is the most expensive place in the world to buy a home. The CBRE Hamptons report shows that prime residential property in London costs about £1,200 a square foot, 20 per cent higher than the cost of property in New York. For “super-prime” properties, prices range from about £2,000 a square foot to a staggering £3,000 a square foot at the very top; this was the actual price achieved for an apartment sold recently in Chelsea Square.

Pricing per square foot allows international buyers a clear view of what they can get for their money. For example, while London’s average price is £1,200 and New York’s is £1,000, Tokyo property costs £900, Hong Kong £700 and Dubai property just £200 a square foot.

Maximum super-prime prices are, of course, much higher, with only Monte Carlo, at £2,800 a square foot, coming close to London prices.

There is obviously more to purchasing a property than price per square foot. Andrew Jones, a partner at the estate agent Knight Frank, says: “People want very different things from different cities. Each international centre has its own attributes, so a straight price per square foot comparison may not be that helpful.”

However, while there are plenty of other factors to consider when looking at properties to purchase, this should at least be one. Since most estate agents will now put the area of a property in square feet on the floor plan when marketing a home, you can do your own calculations to find whether you are getting good value. A higher overall price may be worth paying: for example, take two three-bedroom properties in London SW4 (Clapham). The smaller flat, which costs £275,000, has a total area of 649 sq ft, while the larger three-bedroom home near by costs £375,000 but has a total area of 1,082 sq ft. Measured in terms of space, the larger property is cheaper, costing £346 a square foot, while the smaller property costs £423 a square foot.

JOIN THE WORLD OF SPACE INVADERS

COMPARISONS may well be odious, but there’s no doubt that the world of property is increasingly obsessed with them. Everything that takes off in America comes to the UK eventually — think super-size fridges and pre-nuptial agreements — so we had better get used to square foot comparisons when we buy our homes.

Prices being quoted per square foot really started with new-build blocks of flats, but in a burgeoning property market this trend has now spread to homes of all kinds. The South East, as you might expect, has the highest values, with residential property in Central London the clear leader at £1,200 per square foot.

Guildford, voted one of the best places to live in Britain in a recent Channel 4 programme, is a far more affordable £249. Cambridge, boosted by an affluent educated elite and wealthy silicon-valley market, comes in close behind at £240, while Brighton, bolstered by its Soho-by-Sea reputation and its celebrity residents, follows closely with prices of £232 per square foot.

Rather surprisingly, homes in Lincoln are fetching an average £190 per square foot, ahead of Birmingham at £152, where smart flats in the old jewellery quarter have proved popular with young and well-off singletons. York probably counts as something of a bargain at £182, as does Bristol at £164 and Leeds at £147.

Bottom of the league, but top of the table for bargains, is Manchester, where prices are a very manageable £137 per square foot.

Source: Timesonline

Related:

• Dublin’s prices among world’s most costly
• Coldwell Banker House Price Index
• Knight Frank Global House Price Index

“For sale: residential property in attractive Manhattan locale. River views and gardens with fountains. Own private roads. High ceilings. Some renovations required. Currently occupied. Accept $5bn or near offer.”

No such classified ad has been listed, because word of mouth will suffice to attract buyers. Never mind that the price being asked will ensure that it goes down as the most expensive sale of a single property in the modern history of the United States.

Formally on the auction block is a pair of apartment complexes, called Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, that bestride 10 city blocks on the East Side of Manhattan from 14th to 23rd Street flanking the East River. Together they comprise 110 buildings with 11,000 apartments.

The seller is neither a tycoon nor the city, but rather the insurance giant Metropolitan Life, which has traditionally held a huge portfolio of buildings across New York. It built the complexes at the end of the Second World War to provide comfortable, if unglamorous, homes for returning veterans.

Today, the chunky brick stumps that are the apartment buildings are still short on aesthetic appeal and living inside Stuyvesant or Peter Cooper can have the feel of belonging to an institution. Strict rules govern matters such as pets (very few are allowed) and sunbathing in the garden is also discouraged.

But Met Life has engaged in a $300m (£160m) prettification scheme over recent years, which prompted rumours of a likely sale. It is also trying to reinvent the two communities as a place for luxury rentals appealing to young professionals.

Today, there are 25,000 people in Peter Cooper and Stuyvesant and many are still more middle class than affluent. This is largely because about two-thirds of the apartments fall under complicated rent-control laws that restrict the owner’s ability to raise the rent.

Anyone spending $5bn, however, will need to find ways to maximise their rental returns. This will prompt fears that the days are coming to an end when the two communities offered sanctuary to middle-class families who would otherwise find few alternatives in overheated Manhattan. The complexes’ current residents range from nurses, firemen and police officers to teachers and students.

Suzanne Wasserman, a historian and long-time resident of the complex, said it meant the process of squeezing “people who aren’t just interested in money” out of Manhattan would accelerate.

Met Life is well used to seeking buyers for its properties. Last year alone, it sold a landmark tower at 1 Madison Avenue and the Met Life building, the skyscraper which used to be the Pan Am Building. The pair sold for $2.6bn.

Prospective bidders are said to be queueing already for Peter Cooper and Stuyvesant. Those expressing an interest apparently include UBS Bank, The Blackstone investment firm, a group of Dubai investors, and top New York property development dynasties.

Source: Belfast Telegraph

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• A $5 Billion Slice of Manhattan (Times Online)

London has officially overtaken New York as the world’s most expensive residential market, a top global property agency said in a report on Thursday.

“Our research suggests prices currently achieved in the prime areas of Central London are the highest in the world when measured by price per square foot (sq ft),” said CBRE Hamptons International, part of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc (CBG.N: Quote, Profile, Research), one of the world’s largest property services firms.CBRE said prime residential property in London on average cost around 1,200 pounds ($2,280) per sq ft compared with 1,000 pounds per sq ft in New York.

The pricing differential largely reflected the continued buoyancy in the London market, which was in sharp contrast to the slowing U.S. market, CBRE said.

Tokyo was the third most expensive residential market at around 900 pounds per sq ft.The report said London’s West End also beat Manhattan at the very top — or super-prime — end of the market.

It cited apartments at The Plaza and a triplex penthouse in the Pierre Hotel in New York that were on the market for between 2,700 and 2,800 pounds per sq ft, while an apartment in London’s Belgravia had set a record for a new development above 2,800 pounds per sq ft and a second-hand property in Chelsea had sold for more than 3,000 pounds per sq ft.In Europe, only Monte Carlo had kept pace with prices in London and New York, CBRE said, citing a recently completed sale at Le Park Palace for 2,840 pounds per sq ft.

Source: Reuters