Amazon to Lease 3 Floors in Singapore’s Asia Square and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

The importance of tech occupiers to Asia’s office landlords was underlined yet again today when Amazon was reported to be taking over three floors in a trophy office tower in Singapore from Citigroup.

Also in the news, Brookfield is said to be joining the India REIT club and a Macquarie-backed data centre developer has announced plans to build Asia’s biggest server shed outside of China.

Amazon to Lease Three Floors in Singapore’s Asia Square

Amazon is planning to take over some of Citigroup’s office space in Singapore at a time when a number of the e-commerce giant’s Chinese tech rivals are expanding here.

The online retail giant will lease three floors covering about 90,000 sq ft at Asia Square Tower 1 in the heart of the financial district, according to people with knowledge of the plans. Staff will move into the new offices early next year, the sources said, asking not to be identified because the plans are not public. Read more>>

Brookfield REIT Plans $600 million IPO

Brookfield Asset Management will be raising up to $600 million through listing of its Real Estate Investment Trust NSE 2.83 % (REIT). The global investor is looking to list the REIT by mid-December or early January, said two persons with direct knowledge of the development.

The Canadian alternate investment major is planning to file draft prospectus with the capital market regulator SEBI for the same. Read more>>

Macquarie’s AirTrunk Plans 300 MW Tokyo Data Center 

AirTrunk, a hyperscale data centre specialist, on Tuesday announced it would be entering into the biggest data center market in Asia (excluding China) with a plan to construct a new 300+ megawatt (MW) hyperscale data centre campus in Inzai, Chiba Prefecture. The  initial ~60 MW phase of the campus is targeted to open in late 2021 to support anchor customer demand.

Set to be one of the largest independent data centers in Asia, AirTrunk TOK1 will be scalable to over  300 MW, allowing public cloud customers the ability to scale rapidly to support their growing capacity  requirements in Japan. The data center will be the company’s sixth in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region,  bringing its platform to a total capacity of more than 750 MW across five tier one markets. Read more>>

Country Garden to Sell Homes on Alibaba’s TMall at 15% Off

China’s property developers, stymied by a months-long ban on showroom exhibitions and the worst economic growth pace in decades, are girding themselves for a new sales strategy in the age of the coronavirus — online sales.

Country Garden Holdings and other major Chinese developers are putting some of their new homes on Tmall Haofang, a new sales channel by the world’s largest e-commerce platform, operated by this newspaper’s owner Alibaba Group Holding. Selected real estate projects sold on the channel, which means “good homes,” will be entitled to discounts of up to 15 per cent off their catalogue prices. Read more>>

Evergrande Reaches Deal with Investors to Escape $19B Cash Crunch

China Evergrande Group, the nation’s biggest developer by sales, has unveiled steps to avert a 130 billion yuan (US$19.1 billion) cash crunch after the stock slumped this month amid concerns about its debt load.

The company said most investors owning 36.5 per cent in its key unit called Hengda Real Estate will maintain their holdings for an undisclosed period of time, according to an exchange filing late Tuesday. They agreed to not require the company to buy back their stakes, it added. Read more>>

Hong Kong Home Prices Drop 1.1% in August

Hong Kong’s prices for used residential property declined by the most in six months in August, as the coronavirus pandemic combined with the city’s worst recession on record in sapping investors’ appetite.

The August price index for lived-in homes dropped by 1.1 per cent to 380.6, according to the Rating and Valuation Department on Wednesday, the biggest decline since February and down 4.1 per cent from the May 2019 peak of 396.9. The price index fell 2.1 per cent among large homes measuring over 1,722 square feet (160 square metres), the biggest drop for abodes of all sizes. Read more>>

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