Real Estate

Bloomberg Germany’s construction minister, Horst Seehofer, wants to help protect tenants by making it more difficult to convert rental apartments into condominiums, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported. Seehofer is proposing to introduce a threshold of at least two-thirds of the flats in an apartment building having to be sold to tenants or their family members for any conversion plan to gain ...

Bloomberg Canada’s federal housing agency is considering scaling back mortgage underwriting practices to limit excessive borrowing due to the threat of significant declines in real estate prices and rising debt levels. The combination of higher mortgage debt, declining property prices and increased unemployment is “cause for concern for Canada’s longer-term financial stability,” Evan Siddall, chief executive officer at Canada Mortgage ...

Bloomberg One of the UK’s biggest real-estate managers is predicting gloomy times ahead for bricks and mortar. Insurance giant Aviva Plc expects residential property prices to drop 12% and commercial real estate to decline by 15% because of the impact of the pandemic, it said in an earnings update on Thursday. On a slightly brighter note, it sees long-term growth ...

Bloomberg UK house prices may fall 16% because of the economic upheaval caused by the coronavirus, according to a desktop stress test by the Bank of England (BOE). That decline would be in line with the fall in residential property values during the financial crisis, though the central bank says that banks would not suffer “very material losses in the ...

Bloomberg Singapore home sales slumped in March and are set to take a harder hit in coming months as the government enforces a more draconian lockdown that threatens to bring the property market to a standstill. Sales in the city-state fell 32% to 660 units last month — even before the toughest curbs were imposed — from 976 in February, ...

Bloomberg Toronto home sales surged in March, though government measures to stem the spread of the Covid-19 virus slowed real-estate activity in the second half of the month. Sales in around Canada’s largest city jumped 12.3% from a year earlier to 8,012 transactions, while the benchmark price climbed 2.3% from February to a non-seasonally adjusted C$865,200 ($611,881), the Toronto Regional ...

Bloomberg UK house prices were climbing at the fastest pace in more than two years before the coronavirus pandemic almost brought the market to a standstill, according to Nationwide Building Society. Values rose 3% from a year earlier in March, and gained 0.8% from February alone, the mortgage lender said. The sample period excludes recent disruption caused by UK’s restrict- ...

Bloomberg Singapore home prices fell the most in more than three years in the first quarter as the coronavirus outbreak slammed the economy. Property values declined 1.2% in the three months ended on March 31, according to a preliminary estimate from the Urban Redevelopment Authority released on Wednesday. That’s the steepest decline since a 1.5% drop in the third quarter ...

Bloomberg Asking prices for UK homes rose to a record in March as the market appeared undented by the coronavirus outbreak that’s threatening economies across the globe. Values increased 1% on the month to an average 312,625 pounds, Rightmove said in a report on Monday. In London, they gained 1.6% from a month earlier to 638,826 pounds. Both gauges posted ...

Bloomberg The world’s biggest property event held on the French Riviera has been pushed back to June over concern about the coronavirus epidemic, the summit organisers said. The four-day event, known as MIPIM, will now take place June 2-5 in Cannes instead of its usual March slot. “The well-being of our clients and staff is our priority,” Paul Zilk, chief ...