Bloomberg In the pre-crash days, sustainable building materials and low-flow toilets became part of the common real estate conversation: Slap “eco” on a home, the thinking went, and it was more valuable, not just to the earth but to the homeowner. The most direct path to an officially green building was through third-party certification—if the building could check ...
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China inks deal for industrial park at Oman’s Duqm port
Reuters A group of Chinese investors have signed an agreement to build an industrial park at Oman’s southern port of Duqm in a project that could attract billions of dollars of investment, government and company officials said on Monday. The Omani government is working to develop the area around Duqm, on a stretch of barren coast 550 km (345 ...
Read More »Soured British commercial property loans cut by half as values jump
Bloomberg Rising property values enabled lenders in the U.K. to reduce defaulted commercial-property loans on their books by almost half to about 12.1 billion pounds ($17.5 billion) last year, a survey showed. The amount remaining in default fell from 23.2 billion pounds at the end of 2014, according to a survey of lenders by Leicester, England’s De Montfort University ...
Read More »No takers yet for New Jersey’s most expensive home
BLOOMBERG In this age of tiny houses and the less-is-more aesthetic of millennials, can a house be too large for its market—even when that market sports a median home price around the $5 million mark? That has to be a question that occurs when viewing this massive 30,000-square-foot home listed for $48,880,000 in tony Alpine, NJ. New Jersey’s most ...
Read More »Qatar First Bank signs deal with UK’s realty adviser JLL
EMIRATES BUSINESS Qatar First Bank L.L.C. (QFB), a leading Shari’ah compliant bank based in Qatar offering investment opportunities and innovative financial solutions with local, regional and international reach, announced the signing of an agreement with JLL, in order to offer shareholders and clients the ability to source real estate opportunities based on their specific requirements and budget. Signed at ...
Read More »US’s midwest drives home sales growth
AP Midwestern homebuyers helped spark a national increase in real estate sales during April, a sign that demand for housing remains steady despite rising prices and tight inventories. Sales of existing homes rose 1.7 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.45 million, the National Association of Realtors said. Americans are eagerly searching for homes. But ...
Read More »Eiffel Tower to be turned into rental apartment at Euro 2016
AFP Four lucky competition winners are set to be the first people in history to use the Eiffel Tower as a vacation home next month. Rental company HomeAway is taking over part of the first floor of the iconic 300-meter (yard) landmark for the duration of the UEFA Euro 2016 soccer tournament in Paris, and transforming it into Hausmannian-style ...
Read More »Condos at ‘Ground Zero mosque’ site get global financing
Bloomberg A luxury-condo project planned for the lower Manhattan site of what was once to be the “Ground Zero mosque†has received $219 million in financing from an international consortium of lenders, paving the way for 50 high-end units to enter a New York market that is growing heavy with them. Developer Soho Properties, led by Sharif El-Gamal, said ...
Read More »UK house prices could drop 18% after Brexit: Treasury
BLOOMBERG British house prices would take a severe blow in the years immediately after a vote to leave the European Union, according to an analysis by the Treasury. The study concludes that prices would be between 10 percent and 18 percent lower by 2018 relative to their performance inside the EU, according to the Treasury. However, Chancellor of the ...
Read More »Tokyo to get bigger skyscrapers with record developer debt
Bloomberg Japan’s biggest real estate companies are borrowing record amounts of cheap cash to pay for the nation’s tallest skyscrapers yet. Mitsubishi Estate Co. plans to build a 390 meter (1,280 feet) tower with 61 floors above ground in front of Tokyo Station, making it the nation’s biggest building. That and 27 other urban renewal projects in Japan’s capital ...
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