Foreigners have been gobbling up Chinese bricks and mortar this year. For example, 12,000 Hong Kong buyers purchased property there in the first half of 2009, up 23 per cent on the same time last year analysts say.
We may expect China's rich to return the favour when their government gives them the go-ahead to buy property abroad. The Middle Kingdom has 825,000 individuals with 10 million yuan to their name, enough to make each a Sterling millionaire in Britain. The Hurun Wealth Report reveals they spend half of their money on housing.
The Chinese like buying property, because they consider it a safe, long term investment. When the Chinese are given the green light to invest overseas, analysts say the HNWI's will focus on luxury homes in big cities like London, New York and Paris, university towns where their children study, and investment hotspots, including the Middle East.
(All The World's a Home : Global Property News)
Friday, 28 August 2009
BETTING ON MACAU
Analysts are betting the slow recovery in Macau's housing market will gather pace soon. Property prices are rising, but at a much slower rate than in Hong Kong or mainland China, and remain 33 per cent below their late 2007 peak.Macau, a small, semi-autonomous region of China on the opposite side of the Pearl River delta from Hong Kong, relies on gaming for two-thirds of its income. Before the economic downturn this former Portuguese colony attracted many overseas property investors, especially ethnic Chinese.
With new casinos opening, visa restrictions relaxed, taxes and foreign exchange controls changed, and equity markets booming, analysts consider Macau ripe for investment again. Jones Lang LaSalle forecasts prices will rise between 10-20 per cent in the second half of this year.
A further boost to its economy will come if a planned bridge connecting Macau to Hong Kong and the neighbouring Chinese city of Zhuhai goes ahead, because it will speed up travelling time to the enclave. At the moment, travel between Macau and Hong Kong is by ferry, jetfoil or helicopter.
(All The World's a Home : Global Property News)
Thursday, 27 August 2009
THE NEW TUNISIA
Tunisia wants overseas investors to buy property at Berge du Lac, a brand new, 150 hectare waterfront district, on the edge of the country's capital, Tunis, which will be fully completed by 2015.
A growing number of international firms opening offices in this government-backed development zone, include KPMG, Cap Gemini and British Airways. The British, Americans, Canadians and Malaysians have moved their embassies there.
Although, the district's western-style homes are very different to traditional Tunisian dwellings, with car parking spaces for example, they are attracting some younger, middle class residents. Prices for flats start at about GBP120,000.
Foreigners who buy properties as second homes can spend as much time as they want in the country. Tunisia is negotiating an open skies agreement to improve its air connections to other parts of the world.
(All The World's a Home : Global Property News)
BOURGEOIS FRANCE
The French property market is emerging from the global economic downturn as one of the world's strongest. House prices fell in 2008 and 2009, but they did not collapse, the country is out of recession and the euro is strong against other currencies, so the value of French property relative to the rest of the world has risen.
The luxury end of France's housing market is doing particularly well with Paris and the Cote d'Azur benefiting from their long established reputations for being safe havens for the fabulously rich and great places to live.
The Top Ten Most Expensive Streets in the World survey carried out by Wealth Bulletin features two French addresses – the only country to get a double mention on the list. Avenue Montaigne in Paris, where the Elysee Palace is located, has sales prices averaging USD54,000 per square metre. That was fifth on the list. Incredibly, prices are twice that much on Chemin de Saint-Hospice, Cap Ferrat, where they average a staggering USD100,000 per square metre. This street takes second place on the list, behind Avenue Princesse Grace, 30 miles down the road in Monaco. There, prices average USD120,000 per square metre.
(All The World's a Home : Global Property News)
US SLUMP ENDS
The US housing market is recovering from its worst slump since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Consultancy, Herrmann Forecasting, says "We're seeing multiple signs of a bottom in the housing market”.
Here's the evidence: Prices rose 1.4 per cent in the second quarter 2009, the first rise since they started falling three years ago. The number of new homes being built is rising, sales of existing homes is rising and the value of house-builders' shares is rising.
Why the upturn? The 32 per cent fall in prices from 2006 to the first quarter of 2009 is finally bringing buyers back into the market.
Some clouds remain on the horizon: unemployment is growing and a massive USD3.4 trillion worth of homes remain at risk of repossession, because their owner's mortgage debt exceeds the value of the property.
What's more, masses of new homes remain empty and a third of existing homes sold are repossessions. This prompts Capital Economics to caution “the housing market has turned the corner, but the recovery will be slow and long.”
(All The World's a Home : Global Property News)
Friday, 21 August 2009
A TALE OF TWO SALES
Time for some home truths. Attempting to sell my flat and helping my mother sell her house has revealed some worrying aspects about the British property market.
Number one: My own sale. It took six weeks for my Home Information Pack (HIP) to be delivered, when it is supposed to take two weeks.
It has been illegal to put a home up for sale without a completed HIP since April, so theoretically my flat could not be marketed during that long wait. As it was, my estate agent was not too fussy and started marketing my flat without a HIP. Needless to say, not a single viewer asked to see a pack during those six weeks.
Such lax attitudes might be enough to worry some people, but there is a bigger issue which ought to concern everyone. HIPs were intended to speed up the sales process, but if it takes six weeks for a pack to be prepared, then the system is failing and actually slowing the process down.
This raises another question: If HIP providers are failing to produce reports on time now, when there are so few sellers in the market, how will they cope when the market gets busy again? Will this added bureaucracy make the housing market even more inert?
Number two: My mother's sale. Two buyers made offers on my mother's home and both asked surveyors to value the house for them. Only 17 days separated publication of these surveyors' reports and yet their valuations differed by 25 per cent. There were no sudden shocks to the market in the days between these valuations and no secrets about the house revealed that might affect its price. So what could explain such wide variation in these valuations?
The lower of the two valuations could be explained by good, old-fashioned backside protecting. Some surveyors have been criticised for giving low valuations in recent months so they can avoid being sued by mortgage lenders if prices fall further.
In both cases, the prospective buyers paid these surveyors in excess of £1000 for these reports. Was that money well spent? Did these highly qualified, independent professionals know their job? Are they really better than anyone else when it comes to property valuation? Bluntly, are they useless?
The wide variation in those valuations reveals an unwelcome home truth. It shows that pricing a property is a guessing game. Yes, investors will use yields as a scientific way to determine a home's value, but for a great many owner-occupiers, emotional factors dominate: “Will that home make me happy” they ask themselves, which is absolutely the right question.
Estate agents valuations which, we all know, vary widely and surveyors valuations which do too, apparently, are merely rough guides, and are useless when it comes to putting a value on individual domestic happiness.
Put another way, the value of a home depends entirely on what it is worth to the person buying it and to the person selling it, it is entirely an individual matter. That is why my mother will pay over the odds, in many peoples' opinion, for her new home, a mansion block flat, because its location, lightness, airiness, spaciousness and working fireplace are worth so much more to her than others it seems.
We won't bother to have a surveyor value it. She doesn't need a mortgage and the money will be better spent on putting right small things and making it look nice. We haven't seen a HIP for it either. Chances are, it's not published yet. In any case, sometimes, intuition can be more useful than thousands of pounds worth of professional advice and a vendor's half-truthful answers on a HIP's Property Information Questionnaire (PIQ), and it's free. It's less of a bureaucratic mouthful too.
(All The World's a Home : Global Property News)
Number one: My own sale. It took six weeks for my Home Information Pack (HIP) to be delivered, when it is supposed to take two weeks.
It has been illegal to put a home up for sale without a completed HIP since April, so theoretically my flat could not be marketed during that long wait. As it was, my estate agent was not too fussy and started marketing my flat without a HIP. Needless to say, not a single viewer asked to see a pack during those six weeks.
Such lax attitudes might be enough to worry some people, but there is a bigger issue which ought to concern everyone. HIPs were intended to speed up the sales process, but if it takes six weeks for a pack to be prepared, then the system is failing and actually slowing the process down.
This raises another question: If HIP providers are failing to produce reports on time now, when there are so few sellers in the market, how will they cope when the market gets busy again? Will this added bureaucracy make the housing market even more inert?
Number two: My mother's sale. Two buyers made offers on my mother's home and both asked surveyors to value the house for them. Only 17 days separated publication of these surveyors' reports and yet their valuations differed by 25 per cent. There were no sudden shocks to the market in the days between these valuations and no secrets about the house revealed that might affect its price. So what could explain such wide variation in these valuations?
The lower of the two valuations could be explained by good, old-fashioned backside protecting. Some surveyors have been criticised for giving low valuations in recent months so they can avoid being sued by mortgage lenders if prices fall further.
In both cases, the prospective buyers paid these surveyors in excess of £1000 for these reports. Was that money well spent? Did these highly qualified, independent professionals know their job? Are they really better than anyone else when it comes to property valuation? Bluntly, are they useless?
The wide variation in those valuations reveals an unwelcome home truth. It shows that pricing a property is a guessing game. Yes, investors will use yields as a scientific way to determine a home's value, but for a great many owner-occupiers, emotional factors dominate: “Will that home make me happy” they ask themselves, which is absolutely the right question.
Estate agents valuations which, we all know, vary widely and surveyors valuations which do too, apparently, are merely rough guides, and are useless when it comes to putting a value on individual domestic happiness.
Put another way, the value of a home depends entirely on what it is worth to the person buying it and to the person selling it, it is entirely an individual matter. That is why my mother will pay over the odds, in many peoples' opinion, for her new home, a mansion block flat, because its location, lightness, airiness, spaciousness and working fireplace are worth so much more to her than others it seems.
We won't bother to have a surveyor value it. She doesn't need a mortgage and the money will be better spent on putting right small things and making it look nice. We haven't seen a HIP for it either. Chances are, it's not published yet. In any case, sometimes, intuition can be more useful than thousands of pounds worth of professional advice and a vendor's half-truthful answers on a HIP's Property Information Questionnaire (PIQ), and it's free. It's less of a bureaucratic mouthful too.
(All The World's a Home : Global Property News)
Monday, 10 August 2009
MADEIRA, THE "NEW ALGARVE"
In Madeira, developers have completed the island's first set of purpose-built holiday homes, and two more projects are on the way.
Making these schemes possible has been huge investment in the Portuguese island's air, road and sea connections over the past decade which have made visiting the island a good deal easier and raised its profile in the world.
Located in the Atlantic 350 miles off the west coast of Morocco, Madeira is a tourist island that has traditionally appealed to older holidaymakers from northern Europe, particularly Britain, because of its warm climate and easy pace of life. Famous visitors have included Sir Winston Churchill and Baroness Thatcher.
Tourism was given a boost earlier this decade when TAP, the Portuguese national airline, lost its monopoly on flights to the island. With the arrival of easyJet, British Airways and other operators, the number of destinations served by the airport has grown to 50. The airport has been rebuilt to cater for this increased traffic, and new motorways, bridges and tunnels created to make getting about this mountainous island a good deal easier.
Yachts sailing between Europe and the Caribbean have been restocking at a marina built at the Quinto do Lorde estate in 2002, and rumours are circulating that a new liner terminal will be created, so the harbour at Madeira's capital, Funchal, can accommodate super-yachts.
In addition to Madeira's two existing golf courses, two more will be created on the main island and a third on the smaller, outlying island of Porto Santo.
Tight planning laws aimed at avoiding overcrowding mean the maximum height of new buildings in Funchal's historic city centre is seven floors, although this is stretched to twelve in exceptional cases. In the countryside it is three floors.
New hotels must have at least four stars. Among those opening are Madeira's first designer hotels, The Vine Hotel and the Choupana Hills Resort and Spa.
These moves have encouraged developers to construct purpose-built holiday homes. At newly completed Palheiro Village, high in the hills above Funchal, are 48 villas and 37 apartments painted in warm reds, pinks, yellows and oranges.
Half of Palheiro Village's homes have been sold, 70 per cent to British and Irish buyers, most of the rest to other Europeans. Prices for freehold homes range from euro325,000 to euro1.8 million, and fractional ownership options start at euro120,000 for a quarter share of a one bed-apartment. Most properties have terraces and some have pools. Village facilities include a communal swimming pool.
The village is located on the lower slopes of the Palheiro Estate where residents have access to a modern spa at hotel, Casa Velha do Palheiro, and an 18-hole golf course.
Two more upmarket, holiday home developments are on the way. Sixty contemporary-looking villas and 112 apartments are scheduled for completion at Azulara, west of Funchal, in late 2012. Prices for apartments start at Euro281,000. Early buyers have come from as far afield as Barbados and the Middle East. At Quinta do Lorde, 127 traditional-style dwellings are under construction.
The completion of the Palheiro Village is significant for Madeira's tourism industry and property market, Anne Marchington, sales manager at Palheiro Village, believes.
"Madeira can be seen as "a late starter" for this type of resort development compared to the Algarve in mainland Portugal, and islands such as Mallorca," she says, "but with necessary conditions all now in place, the development of residential tourism on a small scale and aiming for the high-quality end of the market, is likely to become well-established."
The global economic downturn has been cruel to Madeira. No sooner had its spanking new roads, hotels and holiday homes been built, then tourist numbers were decimated by the credit crunch – the British have found Madeira, which is part of the Eurozone, a little expensive since Sterling plummeted on international currency exchanges last year. Combined with an oversupply of homes in some parts of Funchal, this has been bad news for property prices.
Tony de Nobrega, proprietor of Funchal estate agency, Nobrega Realty, said prices had dropped 30 per cent for ordinary residential property over the past 12 months and demand for holiday homes had "decreased substantially".
He considers it unlikely an upturn will happen any time soon.
"I think 12 months is too soon to forecast even if any positive improvement in the world economy takes place," he says, "it will still take time to filter into the local market."
Even so, despite these cyclical problems, Madeira's structural improvements bode well for its property market in the longer term. Now, could be exactly the right time to buy on the island.
BUYERS GUIDE
Madeira is an archipelago in the mid-Atlantic, west of Morocco and north of the Canary Islands, owned by Portugal. The main island of Madeira is 57 kilometres wide and 22km long.
Half of Madeira's 250,000 population live in the capital, Funchal, on Madeira island. This is where most homes for sale are found, including new build schemes on the edge of the city.
Madeira is a self-governing region of Portugal with property purchase rules slightly different to that of the mainland.
Foreigners can buy property anywhere on Madeira and its outlying islands, except for the uninhabited Desertas Islands which are nature reserves where nobody is allowed to live.
Purchase costs will add around 7 per cent on top of the sales price. These costs include IMT, a property tax, which ranges from 0 to 6 per cent of the value of the property. A legal official known as a notary charges a 2 per cent fee for arranging the public deed.
The Land Registry charges a few hundred euros for registering the sale, and a similar amount is paid if the buyer has a mortgage which they must declare. Lawyers may charge about Euro3,000, possibly less.
Properties are purchased through an escritura system, similar to that which exists in Spain and Portugal. In the presence of a notary, the buyer and seller sign the public deed, and then exchange cheque for house keys. Since these formalities are carried out in Portuguese, foreign buyers will need an interpreter. This may be their lawyer if they are bi-lingual.
Properties can be let to holidaymakers. Madeira's warm, dry climate attracts visitors throughout the year with golfers mainly coming in the winter. The tourist board hopes more golfers will visit the archipelago when its three new golf courses open. Fully furnished, three bedroom villas at Palheiro Village let for Euro1,450 per week.
Although most Madeirans are Portuguese, English is widely spoken, and some estate agents speak Spanish and Russian to cater for a large number of buyers from Venezuela, where many Madeirans emigrated to in the past, and the CIS. Many South Africans of Madeiran heritage buy second homes in the archipelago. It is popular with British buyers some of whom live there in retirement.
Madeira has a small Chinese community, mainly from Macau, most of whom work in the restaurant trade. Madeira is part of the European Union and uses the euro as its currency. Most flights between Hong Kong and Madeira involve making two stops, and none of them are direct.
Madeira is volcanic, but the last eruption is estimated to have occurred 6,500 years ago.
(All The World's a Home : Global Property News)
Making these schemes possible has been huge investment in the Portuguese island's air, road and sea connections over the past decade which have made visiting the island a good deal easier and raised its profile in the world.
Located in the Atlantic 350 miles off the west coast of Morocco, Madeira is a tourist island that has traditionally appealed to older holidaymakers from northern Europe, particularly Britain, because of its warm climate and easy pace of life. Famous visitors have included Sir Winston Churchill and Baroness Thatcher.
Tourism was given a boost earlier this decade when TAP, the Portuguese national airline, lost its monopoly on flights to the island. With the arrival of easyJet, British Airways and other operators, the number of destinations served by the airport has grown to 50. The airport has been rebuilt to cater for this increased traffic, and new motorways, bridges and tunnels created to make getting about this mountainous island a good deal easier.
Yachts sailing between Europe and the Caribbean have been restocking at a marina built at the Quinto do Lorde estate in 2002, and rumours are circulating that a new liner terminal will be created, so the harbour at Madeira's capital, Funchal, can accommodate super-yachts.
In addition to Madeira's two existing golf courses, two more will be created on the main island and a third on the smaller, outlying island of Porto Santo.
Tight planning laws aimed at avoiding overcrowding mean the maximum height of new buildings in Funchal's historic city centre is seven floors, although this is stretched to twelve in exceptional cases. In the countryside it is three floors.
New hotels must have at least four stars. Among those opening are Madeira's first designer hotels, The Vine Hotel and the Choupana Hills Resort and Spa.
These moves have encouraged developers to construct purpose-built holiday homes. At newly completed Palheiro Village, high in the hills above Funchal, are 48 villas and 37 apartments painted in warm reds, pinks, yellows and oranges.
Half of Palheiro Village's homes have been sold, 70 per cent to British and Irish buyers, most of the rest to other Europeans. Prices for freehold homes range from euro325,000 to euro1.8 million, and fractional ownership options start at euro120,000 for a quarter share of a one bed-apartment. Most properties have terraces and some have pools. Village facilities include a communal swimming pool.
The village is located on the lower slopes of the Palheiro Estate where residents have access to a modern spa at hotel, Casa Velha do Palheiro, and an 18-hole golf course.
Two more upmarket, holiday home developments are on the way. Sixty contemporary-looking villas and 112 apartments are scheduled for completion at Azulara, west of Funchal, in late 2012. Prices for apartments start at Euro281,000. Early buyers have come from as far afield as Barbados and the Middle East. At Quinta do Lorde, 127 traditional-style dwellings are under construction.
The completion of the Palheiro Village is significant for Madeira's tourism industry and property market, Anne Marchington, sales manager at Palheiro Village, believes.
"Madeira can be seen as "a late starter" for this type of resort development compared to the Algarve in mainland Portugal, and islands such as Mallorca," she says, "but with necessary conditions all now in place, the development of residential tourism on a small scale and aiming for the high-quality end of the market, is likely to become well-established."
The global economic downturn has been cruel to Madeira. No sooner had its spanking new roads, hotels and holiday homes been built, then tourist numbers were decimated by the credit crunch – the British have found Madeira, which is part of the Eurozone, a little expensive since Sterling plummeted on international currency exchanges last year. Combined with an oversupply of homes in some parts of Funchal, this has been bad news for property prices.
Tony de Nobrega, proprietor of Funchal estate agency, Nobrega Realty, said prices had dropped 30 per cent for ordinary residential property over the past 12 months and demand for holiday homes had "decreased substantially".
He considers it unlikely an upturn will happen any time soon.
"I think 12 months is too soon to forecast even if any positive improvement in the world economy takes place," he says, "it will still take time to filter into the local market."
Even so, despite these cyclical problems, Madeira's structural improvements bode well for its property market in the longer term. Now, could be exactly the right time to buy on the island.
BUYERS GUIDE
Madeira is an archipelago in the mid-Atlantic, west of Morocco and north of the Canary Islands, owned by Portugal. The main island of Madeira is 57 kilometres wide and 22km long.
Half of Madeira's 250,000 population live in the capital, Funchal, on Madeira island. This is where most homes for sale are found, including new build schemes on the edge of the city.
Madeira is a self-governing region of Portugal with property purchase rules slightly different to that of the mainland.
Foreigners can buy property anywhere on Madeira and its outlying islands, except for the uninhabited Desertas Islands which are nature reserves where nobody is allowed to live.
Purchase costs will add around 7 per cent on top of the sales price. These costs include IMT, a property tax, which ranges from 0 to 6 per cent of the value of the property. A legal official known as a notary charges a 2 per cent fee for arranging the public deed.
The Land Registry charges a few hundred euros for registering the sale, and a similar amount is paid if the buyer has a mortgage which they must declare. Lawyers may charge about Euro3,000, possibly less.
Properties are purchased through an escritura system, similar to that which exists in Spain and Portugal. In the presence of a notary, the buyer and seller sign the public deed, and then exchange cheque for house keys. Since these formalities are carried out in Portuguese, foreign buyers will need an interpreter. This may be their lawyer if they are bi-lingual.
Properties can be let to holidaymakers. Madeira's warm, dry climate attracts visitors throughout the year with golfers mainly coming in the winter. The tourist board hopes more golfers will visit the archipelago when its three new golf courses open. Fully furnished, three bedroom villas at Palheiro Village let for Euro1,450 per week.
Although most Madeirans are Portuguese, English is widely spoken, and some estate agents speak Spanish and Russian to cater for a large number of buyers from Venezuela, where many Madeirans emigrated to in the past, and the CIS. Many South Africans of Madeiran heritage buy second homes in the archipelago. It is popular with British buyers some of whom live there in retirement.
Madeira has a small Chinese community, mainly from Macau, most of whom work in the restaurant trade. Madeira is part of the European Union and uses the euro as its currency. Most flights between Hong Kong and Madeira involve making two stops, and none of them are direct.
Madeira is volcanic, but the last eruption is estimated to have occurred 6,500 years ago.
(All The World's a Home : Global Property News)
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