Mukesh Ambani, the fifth richest man in the world and head of the Mumbai based petrochemical giant Reliance Industries is estimated to be worth some where in the region of $43 billion. He is also the owner to-be of a 27-story skyscraper in downtown Mumbai that is to cost him colossal $2 billion!
When you’ve got so much money you have to come up with ideas on how to spend it. Exactly this happened while his wife was staying in the Mandarin Oriental in New York, back in 2005. Nita Ambani was so impressed with the interior Asian style decor that she wanted something similar for her to live in.
Her inquiries about the designer soon led to the next step; drawing up plans done with expertise by architecture firm Perkins & Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates, the designers behind the Mandarin Oriental.
What resulted from that is the world’s largest and most expensive home ever. We have covered this in a past post but wanted to deliver some updated information. Every storey Antilla’s skyscraper home will be built to a different specification. The vast variation of materials to be used in it’s build has tremendously added to its overall cost.
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Vietnam is enjoying the property hot seat right now with many reports stating that the country’s economy is on a huge up rise. Vincom Joint Stock Co. reported a 33 percent increase in revenue for the first quarter of 2008 alone. The Vietnamese real estate developer reports that a range of clients signed contracts to rent stalls at higher rentals than usual.
A recent draft regulation that allows foreigners to “lease” property for a 70 year period has created quite a stir amongst foreign investors and foreign expatriates in Vietnam.
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British property investors are taking a long, hard look at the New York property market. With the dollar at a 20-year-low, for British investors with pounds in their pocket, the Big Apple just got a whole lot cheaper. According to the Financial Times, Steven Toumbas, an equities investor from London, has always wanted to own a second home in the US. “America is the engine for the world,” he says. “Everyone wants to have a holiday home in Florida, or an asset in New York. It’s the place to be.”
Mr Toumbas began looking at potential properties in New York City in mid-June 2006, but felt the timing was not quite right. The pound at that point was trading at about $1.84. “I held back because I thought there would be further dollar weakness,” he said.
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The Bank of Thailand admitted it had intervened in the currency market late last week, after a sudden weakening of the Baht, caused by foreign investors shifting their money out of Asia, worried that Citigroup would be downgraded when the full effect of the US sub-prime mortgage crisis took hold.
One potential upside of the situation at the moment is to make Thailand’s property market a far more attractive investment opportunity. The baht reached 34 baht to a US dollar this week. Combined with political uncertainties over the upcoming election causing softening prices the Thai property market seems to be shifting into overdrive.
Clayton Wade, managing director of Premier International, a Thailand-based residential and commercial property consulting group, made some interesting comments in a recent interview with The Bangkok Post. “With the recent downturn in economic indicators and consumer confidence, many local investors have switched money from the stock market to a more secure sector - the Thai property market.”
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Tags: thailand+property, bangkok, thai+condos
The Irish Independent had an article this Sunday that attracted our attention. With the massive increase in property values in Ireland recently, many Irish home-owners have jumped on the worldwide buy-to-let market abroad. Particular favourites have been the USA, Spain and Bulgaria.
All these markets are taking a beating at the moment, particularly the American market. GE Money Home Lending subsidiary “British Mortgages Abroad” recently pulled out of the Florida market and are not accepting any more mortgage applications on properties in Florida
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Plans are proceeding , despite vehement opposition in France, to build a Louvre in Abu Dhabi. The building will, for want of a better word be, “unusual.”-A shallow dome that looks rather like an escapee from some low-budget 60’s science fiction movie. With geometric openings causing patterns of light to bounce around the interior, I can almost see the likes of Matisse and Van Gogh turning in their graves.
No doubt, I am not the only one to see the irony of the whole situation, and as I discussed in “Cultural Oases in Abu Dhabi part one,” the Guggenheim seems to have come to some arrangement whereby none of the works on display in their museum outpost will “offend local sensibilities,” and I wonder if the Louvre has come to the same arrangement. If so, I have the same question to pose: “Dude, like what are you gonna hang on the wall, man?”
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A brief visit to the BP carbon footprint calculator gives our household a carbon footprint of about 7 (tonnes of CO2) compared to a national average of 9.85. We’re weak on energy saving improvements to the home but relatively strong when it comes car use. Those figures are without any foreign travel factored in. Add in three short haul flights a year to my putative second home and that footprint rises by about 0.5 of a tonne. Change that to an equally imaginary investment in Florida or the Caribbean and the total increases by 3.30 tonnes and that’s before you’ve done anything to air-condition your premises.
Despite all the talk, warnings about energy waste leading to environmental disaster are not going to make all the difference to people’s foreign travel habits, even though, second home ownership in Cyprus, for example, brings an average increase in one’s carbon footprint of 4.32 tonnes in its train. However, the likelihood that environmental awareness coupled to other factors such as security concerns, hassles with overseas property and increases in the expense of flying will bring about a change in sentiment is something that every property investor needs to be aware of.
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Tags: carbon+footprint, global+warming, second+homes
Recent newspaper reports in Sweden about private wealth have claimed that 20% of Swedes over 20 years of age are kronor millionaires ( 6.6 kronor = 1$) and this wealth is primarily (70%) vested in property, one of the reasons why Swedes have been getting wealthier recently. Although Stockholm’s OMX share index has risen by almost 40% since July 2006, the rise in house prices, at 9% in the last 12 months, has been impressive also. The average house price for the whole country is 1.7m kronor but it is almost double this amount in the capital – 3.2m kronor. The trend seems to be on the rise with a national average house price of 4% in the second quarter. The northern province of Vasternorrland has seen an enormous 11% increase in this period.
Off the cuff conclusions that could be drawn from this situation are that some Swedish investors may be realising their stock exchange profits and re-investing them in housing and that for younger Swedes it must as if the first few rungs of the property ladder are being knocked away. Unfortunately for them, Sweden has traditionally had a rigid, controlled market in rented accommodation as well.
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Tags: sweden, property, overseas+investors, real+estate+boom
Our post on Sunday on Coldwell Banker’s survey of what the well-to-do American thinks about the housing market was more in tune with the spirit of the times than we realised at the time of writing: the Wall Street Journal Online had already published Jeff D. Opdyke’s article – “Real Estate Investors Are Heading Overseas”. Opdyke focuses on the growing trend towards property investments (direct and through funds) abroad but there do not yet appear to be hard statistics on what proportion of US real estate investments are going outside the country.
Factors favouring overseas property investments are the weakening of the housing market in the US and the weakness of the dollar. Foreign real estate can be a hedge against both these trends Last week we commented on the likelihood that exchange rate factors contributed to the success of Morgan Stanley’s MSREF VI fund. For private investors with experience of profiting through property in the US, foreign property can represent a relatively straightforward transference of their investment skills.
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Tags: US+real+estate, overseas, international+real+estate
Thursday, May 8th, 2008 
Posted by OP-Mall in 
