Real Estate

  Bloomberg When interior designer Timothy Corrigan bought Château du Grand-Lucé, an 18th century neoclassical mansion in France’s Loire Valley, for €2.2 million ($2.46 million) in 2005, “I figured I’d be there at least one weekend a month,” he said. “Last year, I was there a total of six days. This year, I haven’t been there once.” Now he’s putting ...

  Bloomberg The Ibovespa extended a weekly drop as mining company Vale SA tumbled and real-estate companies slumped after a report that the government may cut the number of units to be built under its housing program. Vale was among the biggest contributors to the index’s slide on Friday amid lower metal prices. The BM&FBovespa Real Estate Index of 14 ...

  Bloomberg Expat housing packages are so 2012. Long the golden privilege of the Hong Kong-based finance and banking crowd in Asia, the days of guaranteed housing allowances fat enough to rent a 4,000-square-foot harbor-view home on the Peak or a townhouse in exclusive Repulse Bay for HK$300,000 ($38,650) a month are gone. That perk is being slashed or eliminated, ...

  Bloomberg The Kuwait Investment Authority, which describes itself as the world’s oldest sovereign wealth fund, is targeting global infrastructure projects after taking part in a consortium that bought the London City Airport this year, Chairman Anas Al-Saleh said. The fund has shied away from purchasing trophy assets, focusing on deals that “give us our targeted returns,” Al-Saleh, the country’s ...

  Bloomberg Brigitte Blackman, a real estate agent in inner Sydney, says her property listings have slumped 20 percent from a September peak, and the phones at her Potts Point office are no longer ringing off the hook. As Australia barrels toward elections on July 2, political uncertainty is weighing on the nation’s A$6.4 trillion ($4.7 trillion) housing market. With ...

  Bloomberg New York’s financial regulator has issued subpoenas to two companies with ties to Apollo Global Management LLC as part of an inquiry into housing transactions for low-income buyers. The New York State Department of Financial Services subpoenaed ARM Manager LLC, an indirect Apollo subsidiary, and the real estate investment trust it manages, Apollo Residential Mortgage Inc., asking for ...

AP Builders ramped up construction of new homes in April, suggesting that the market remains solid despite sluggish economic growth at the beginning of the year. Housing starts climbed 6.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.17 million units, the Commerce Department said. The increase makes up for much of March’s 9.4 percent drop in starts, a decline ...

  Bloomberg The biotechnology industry’s growth is providing the chance to attain attractive returns on commercial property in markets from Boston to Munich to Shanghai, according to Taimur Hyat, chief strategy officer for PGIM, Prudential Financial Inc.’s $1 trillion asset-management arm. “Biotech is causing a revolutionary change in the type of real estate opportunities we are seeing,” he said in ...

  Bloomberg Ikea, the world’s biggest furniture retailer, plans to sell about €900 million ($1 billion) of European retail parks surrounding its stores, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Ikea has hired Cushman & Wakefield Inc. to help market the assets, two of the people said. Josefin Thorell, a spokeswoman for Ikea, confirmed that the company plans to ...

  Bloomberg Home prices rose in the most Chinese cities in more than two years in April, with gains in second-tier cities surpassing advances in larger hubs. New-home prices excluding government-subsidized housing climbed in 65 cities, compared with 62 in March, among the 70 cities tracked by the government, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday. That’s the most ...