China Backs Offshore Loans for Builders and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

In today’s roundup of regional news headlines, Chinese regulators order key banks to issue offshore loans to help “good quality” developers retire debt, while Evergrande’s chairman vows that the company will meet its home delivery target for 2022 and Country Garden plans a new set of onshore bonds.

Top China Banks to Issue Offshore Loans to Help Developers Repay Debt

China has ordered its top four state-owned banks to issue offshore loans to help developers repay overseas debt, three people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, rolling out its latest support measure for the cash-starved property sector.

The regulators have given “window guidance”, or verbal orders that leave no paper trail, to the banks, setting a date of 10 December by which to make the loans secured against domestic assets, two of the sources said. Read more>>

Evergrande Confident in Meeting 2022 Target for Home Completions

China Evergrande Group will achieve its property delivery target for this year, its chairman Hui Ka Yan said in an internal meeting on Friday.  The company aims to deliver 300,000 units this year, after delivering 256,000 between January and November, it said in a statement, citing Hui’s comments in the meeting.

Bondholders of Hengda Real Estate, Evergrande’s flagship onshore business, agreed to an extension of bond repayment and interest payment on one of its domestic bonds earlier in the day. The repayment date will be postponed from Dec 5 to June 5 next year. Read more>>

Country Garden Plans Second Bond Under Government Guarantee Plan

Country Garden Holdings may follow peer Longfor Group to become a repeat issuer of local bonds under a key programme that guarantees such offerings to help builders ease liquidity crunches.

Country Garden Real Estate Group, the onshore subsidiary of China’s biggest developer by contracted sales, is considering selling RMB 1 billion ($140 million) in three-year medium-term notes guaranteed by state-backed China Bond Insurance Co in mid- or late December, according to people familiar with the situation. Read more>>

Goldman Sachs View of HK Home Prices Too Bearish, JP Morgan Says

Predictions of a 30 percent drop in Hong Kong home prices by the end of 2023 are too pessimistic, according to JP Morgan.

Goldman Sachs in October forecast that prices would fall by 15 percent in both 2022 and 2023. But JP Morgan expects the decline to total 20 percent by May 2023 from a peak in August 2021. The full-year price decline in 2023 will be 8 percent, mostly concentrated in the first half of the year, the investment bank said in a report released Wednesday. Read more>>

Risks to China Financial System Rising as Property Downturn Persists: Moody’s

The risks to the stability of China’s financial system are rising because of the downturn in the country’s property sector and a slowing economy, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

The rating agency said in a report released Thursday that its outlook for the nation’s property sector “remains negative on sluggish demand and weak contracted sales”, though policy support offered by the Chinese authorities could help ease the liquidity burden of some developers. Read more>>

Developer of Cecil Street Project Switches Strategy to Strata Sales

The developers of the new 20-storey freehold office project that will come up on the PIL Building site along Singapore’s Cecil Street have decided on strata sales for the development.

The tie-up of TE Capital Partners and LaSalle Investment Management behind the Solitaire On Cecil project was earlier contemplating a forward sale of the entire asset. But it recently appointed five property agencies — Savills, CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, SRI and Huttons — to market the property on a strata-titled basis instead. Read more>>

Freehold Building in Farrer Park for Sale at S$16.88M Guide Price

A six-storey freehold building in Singapore’s Farrer Park has been put up for sale via expression of interest with a guide price of S$16.88 million ($12.5 million).

The amount translates to S$1,981 per square foot on a total gross floor area of 8,522 square feet (792 square metres), exclusive marketing agent CBRE said Thursday. Read more>>

Higher Property Taxes on the Cards for Singapore Homeowners

Residential property owners in Singapore are poised to pay higher property taxes next year, with the annual values of both private and public housing rising in tandem with surging market rentals.

Annual values of most residential properties will be revised upwards from 1 January 2023 as part of the annual review of properties by the Inland Revenue Authority to calculate property tax payable. Read more>>

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