Blackstone India REIT to Raise $523M in Bonds and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

Stories from Bangalore to Brooklyn make their way into Asia’s real estate world today – with a brief stop over in the Bay Area (just the standard Bay Area, without any proclamations of Great-ness).

In Bangalore, Blackstone-backed Embassy Office Parks is planning to raise $523 million in debt, just weeks after the listed trust made its stock market debut. In New York, a joint ventured controlled by Shanghai’s Greenland Group has found a buyer for a stake in one of the buildings in the project that was known as Atlantic Yards until it switched coasts to adopt the Pacific Park brand.

And in the Bay Area, not all mainland developers are struggling, as a unit of Chinese golf course developer Genzon Group has leased over 800,000 square feet of office space to Facebook. Read on for the details on these stories and more.

Blackstone India REIT to Raise $523M in Bonds

Embassy Office Parks, a joint venture between Blackstone and realty firm Embassy group which recently debuted India’s first REIT, on Tuesday said it will raise Rs 3,650 crore ($523 million) in two tranches through the issue of debentures.

In an announcement the company said that a committee of the board of directors of the REIT manager has approved the issue of secured, redeemable, non-convertible debentures on a private placement basis. The listed trust had raised Rs 4,750 crore through its IPO last month. Read more>>

Facebook Leases Four Bay Area Buildings From Mainland Developer

Kylli Inc., the Chinese-backed developer of the Burlingame Point office campus in the San Francisco suburb of Burlingame, Calif., has landed a tenant for the 803,000-square-foot project. Facebook preleased the property in its entirety.

Designed by Gensler, Burlingame Point will encompass four Class A buildings ranging in size from approximately 155,500 to 245,000 square feet on an 18-acre site along San Francisco Bay in San Mateo County. A San Francisco-based subsidiary of China’s Genzon Investment Group Co., Kylli broke ground on the development in 2017, and in August 2018 the company began lease negotiations with Facebook. Read more>>

Shanghai’s Greenland Group Sells NYC Project Stake to Brodsky Organization

New York residential developer Brodsky has joined master site developer Greenland Forest City Partners in a joint venture to develop 18 Sixth Ave., a long-planned, 859-unit apartment tower next door to Barclays Center in Brooklyn’s Pacific Park project.

Greenland Forest City executive vice-president Scott Solish said in comments to the media that while Greenland Forest City, a US unit of Shanghai-based Greenland Group, is the majority shareholder in the JV, Brodsky “bought a significant piece and will manage development” of 18 Sixth Ave. Read more>>

CapitaLand Sells Self-Storage Business in S$185M Deal

CapitaLand has sold a group of companies that own and manage its StorHub self-storage business for S$179.5 million to an undisclosed buyer.

CapitaLand said the deal is based on an agreed value of S$185 million for StorHub’s 12 self-storage properties. It has 11 facilities in Singapore and one in Shanghai, with a total lettable area of about 800,000 sq ft. The total amount includes S$167.5 million in outstanding shareholder loans owed by the group of companies to StorHub Group. This has been assigned to the buyer, who will pay in stages. Read more>>

Frasers and Sekisui Put Sydney Commercial Project on Market for A$170M

The final three retail assets in the mixed-use Central Park project developed by Frasers Property Australia and Japanese developer Sekisui House in central Sydney are up for sale. Colliers International has been appointed to sell the assets via an international expressions of interest campaign starting early next month.

The transaction is expected to fetch around A$170 million (S$164 million). Central Park Mall, DUO Retail with its eight outlets, and Park Lane Retail with six will be sold as a single block. The sale is the final component of the partnership’s divestment strategy for the A$2 billion project. Read more>>

Mahathir to Revive $34B Bandar Malaysia Project in Nod to China’s BRI Hopes

The government of Malaysia has said it plans to resurrect Bandar Malaysia, the country’s biggest ever real estate development, which it terminated in May 2017 after a dispute with a consortium made up of Iskandar Waterfront Holdings (IWH) and China Railway Engineering Corp (CREC).

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Friday that his cabinet had agreed to reinstate the $34bn scheme, which will give Kuala Lumpur 200ha of shopping mall, canals, 10,000 affordable homes, theme parks, cultural villages, a financial centre and CREC’s own $2bn regional headquarters. Read more>>

Manila Developer SM Prime Promises Progress on Jiangsu Retail Project

SM Prime Holdings Inc., the mall developer controlled by the Philippines’ Sy family, has announced that it will move forward on a long-planned shopping centre in Yangzhou, a third-tier city in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, and is looking at other sites in Southeast Asia as well.

In a press briefing after the company’s annual stockholders meeting, SM Prime president Jeffrey Lim said the company is pouring in P4 billion to build the Yangzhou project, which will be its eighth mall in China, when the 80,000 square metre project opens in two years time. Read more>>

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