Hong Kong stock fell almost 17% amid default fears that are beginning to have a knock-on effect on other markets
Shares in the embattled Chinese property company Evergrande have plunged 17% as investors weigh up whether the group’s massive debt problems could trigger a broader sell off across all financial markets.
Related: ‘China’s Lehman Brothers moment’: Evergrande crisis rattles economy
Continue reading...In Jacinda Ardern’s ‘team of 5 million’, some players have been rewarded very differently to others
The only thing more predictable than rising house prices is the tenor of stories as monthly data from governments or the real estate sector are reported. Record highs in particular places, predictions of trends from economists. Or, the young couple who managed to “get on the housing ladder”, but upon reading you realise it was with financial help from parents.
However, behind these articles a much larger housing story has gradually unfolded. An account of huge and growing inequality. How a government policy designed to respond to the global pandemic and the fear of economic recession has not just created significant wealth, but distributed it in such a concentrated way that it will change the nature of Aotearoa New Zealand for generations to come.
Continue reading...Disgruntled investors voice anger at headquarters as company appoints advisers and says firesale of assets won’t cover debts
Property giant China Evergrande Group has said that it cannot sell properties and other assets fast enough to service its massive $300bn debts, and that its cashflow was under “tremendous pressure”.
Only hours after angry investors besieged its Shenzhen headquarters and the company denied it was set for bankruptcy, Evergrande issued a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange saying that a significant drop in sales would continue this month, which was likely to further deteriorate its liquidity and cash flow.
Continue reading...Hundreds of thousands of trees have died after costly real estate projects thwarted attempts to halt desertification
It all began so beautifully, with the ruler of Dubai photographed planting the first tree of his ambitious environmental initiative, as smiling officials applauded around him.
In 2010, the One Million Trees initiative was announced by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Dubai. The aim of the launch was to increase green areas in Dubai through afforestation, while contributing to overall beautification of the city.
Continue reading...A workplace in Bucharest filled with anti-virus innovations could become the new normal in office design, its creators hope
Not so long ago it may have seemed more like a futuristic vision of the workplace – or a hospital.
But the hands-free door handles, self-cleaning surfaces, antimicrobial paint, air-monitoring display tools, UV light disinfection robots, and 135 other measures at an office block in Bucharest are here to stay, say the creators behind what they are touting as one of the world’s most virus-resilient workplaces, which they hope will become the new normal in office design.
Continue reading...Real estate holdings published for first time show it owns 4,051 properties in Italy, 1,120 abroad
The Vatican has released information on its real estate holdings for the first time, revealing it owns more than 5,000 properties, as part of its most detailed financial disclosures ever.
The information released on Saturday was contained in two documents – a consolidated financial statement for 2020 for the Holy See and the first ever public budget for the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (Apsa).
Continue reading...Westminster council unable to block Cheung Chung-kiu’s grand plans for Knightsbridge property despite ban on “Monopoly board-style” homes
A Chinese billionaire has been granted planning permission to construct an eight-storey, 5,760-sq metre (62,000-sq-ft) private palace overlooking Hyde Park, central London.
Westminster city council granted Cheung Chung-kiu, a Hong Kong-based property tycoon, permission to partly demolish and reconstruct 2-8A Rutland Gate, in Knightsbridge, in order to create his vast new home, which experts said could be worth up to £500m when completed.
Continue reading...Social distancing is feeding an appetite for a new generation of US-style drive-through restaurants
Drive-through restaurants used to be a US-inspired novelty but a big increase in custom during the pandemic means money is pouring into new UK sites, with even upmarket names looking to serve food through car windows for the first time.
New property research suggests that demand for drive-throughs has increased by 25% post-Covid with restaurant chains looking to open a total of 200 sites a year. The clamour comes as established names such as McDonald’s and Burger King face competition from North American brands such as Tim Hortons, famous for its coffee and doughnuts, and burger chain Wendy’s.
Continue reading...Rightmove data shows largest June increase since 2015 but economists suggest Covid boom may be fading
House asking prices have hit record levels across every region of Great Britain, according to latest figures, although some experts have questioned whether the pandemic boom is finally starting to wane.
The price of properties coming to market rose by 0.8% month on month in June to a third consecutive record of £336,073, according to data from Rightmove, a property listings website.
Continue reading...Holdings of more than 40,000 hectares in London, Scotland and Newmarket make Dubai ruler one of UK’s biggest landowners
The controversial ruler of Dubai has acquired a land and property empire in Britain that appears to exceed 40,000 hectares (100,000 acres), making him one of the country’s largest landowners, according to a Guardian analysis.
The huge property portfolio apparently owned by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum and his close family ranges from mansions, stables and training gallops across Newmarket, to white stucco houses in some of London’s most exclusive addresses and extensive moorland including the 25,000-hectare Inverinate estate in the Scottish Highlands.
Continue reading...First the Rose family’s former mansion hit the real estate lists – now it’s the 10-room motel they called home
The motel home of the Rose family in the Emmy-sweeping Canadian TV series Schitt’s Creek is up for sale for C$2m.
The Hockley Motel in the Canadian town of Mono, Ontario, was a key filming location throughout the six seasons of the hit CBC sitcom.
Continue reading...Residents vow to stop Taylor McWilliams’s scheme to develop a site that looms over the famous Electric Avenue street market
The outcome of the fight may help shape London’s future skyline. In one corner is a Texan millionaire DJ and property developer who has put forward plans for a 20-storey office block in Brixton, next to a conservation area and the district’s famous Electric Avenue.
Taylor McWilliams’s property company Hondo, which owns most of Brixton market, claims the proposal will “deliver” 2,000 jobs in the area and generate £2.8m every year for the local economy.
Continue reading...Exodus that started after 9/11 has accelerated — and many fear New York’s financial district will not recover
“They used to stand at the bar three deep,” says John Moran, surveying the long, empty counter at Killarney Rose, a Wall Street bar that would, in another era, have been stuffed with early-shift construction workers and, at lunch and late into the evening, suited bankers.
The world’s pre-eminent financial thoroughfare – at least throughout the 20th century – is a ghost of what it once was. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are still located here, but dozens of financial institutions have emptied out from New York’s financial district in an exodus that started in the wake of 9/11 and has been hastened by Covid.
Continue reading...Sales of £15m-plus English country homes breaking records as wealthy families ‘recalibrate their priorities’
The world’s super-rich are seeking to escape from coronavirus lockdowns in cities by buying multimillion-pound English country estates to create Downton Abbey lifestyles, complete with butlers, cooks, housekeepers and armies of gardeners.
Estate agents are reporting a surge in sales of vast country estates and former castle properties, which until Covid-19 struck had become increasingly hard to shift as the richest of the rich instead opted to live in luxurious skyscraper penthouses, on tropical islands or superyachts.
Continue reading...Documents reveal UAE president owns multibillion-pound property portfolio spanning London’s most expensive neighbourhoods
The row of 1960s-built houses with untidy gardens on a quiet cul-de-sac near Richmond upon Thames appears to have little in common with Ecuador’s red-brick embassy in Knightsbridge, where Julian Assange spent seven years in hiding, just across the road from Harrods.
Continue reading...Entrepreneur Xu Weiping is risking a fortune to build 2,000 3-metre square workspaces in east London
Welcome to cube city. Xu Weiping, a Chinese multimillionaire, has a vision for the future of office work in the post-Covid-19 pandemic world: thousands of office pods where each person works in their own self-contained 3m x 3m cube.
Xu reckons the coronavirus pandemic will have such a fundamental impact on the way people work that he is converting 20 newly constructed office buildings in east London into 2,000 of the individual cube offices.
Continue reading...Developer seeks to cash out of investment in John Nash-designed terrace with views of Regent’s Park
Developers have stuck an asking price of £185m on a house overlooking Regent’s Park in central London in what would be the UK’s second most-expensive home purchase.
The property firm Zenprop is targeting foreign billionaires as potential buyers of 1-18 York Terrace East as it seeks to cash out of a 2016 investment.
Continue reading...Celebrity hangout will allow select group to own shares in ‘world’s best real estate’
The Chateau Marmont, a Hollywood hotspot and hangout for nearly a century, will be converted into a members-only hotel over the next year.
The owner, André Balazs, confirmed his plans to turn the 91-year-old building into a hotel at which a select group of members could buy into “a piece of a portfolio of the best real estate in the world”, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Continue reading...With a six-month eviction moratorium agreed nationally, we look at what else is on offer from states and territories
Although the national cabinet has agreed to a six-month moratorium on evictions, it has abandoned attempts to achieve a nationally consistent approach to financial support for residential landlords and tenants through the Covid-19 crisis.
Since Scott Morrison announced residential tenancies would be a matter for the states and territories on 7 April, many have offered land tax cuts in a bid to incentivise rent reductions.
Continue reading...Son of Rupert Murdoch purchases house seen in credits of the TV show, setting new highest home price ever in California
A Los Angeles mansion built in the 1930s and seen in the credits for the TV show The Beverly Hillbillies has been sold for about $150m, the highest home price ever in California.
The buyer of the Chartwell estate is Lachlan Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch and co-chairman of publishing company News Corp, the Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday.
Continue reading...