China Vanke Buying Stakes in Five Projects From CFLD and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

China Vanke, once the country’s largest developer by sales, had its own downturn int 2016-2017 when it nearly became a business case study in how to stage a mainland hostile takeover. Now that the homebuilder is under government control, it seems to be using China’s current market downturn to rebuild its project pipeline. That downturn also figures into the increasing appearance of discounts in the mainland housing market, while in Hong Kong, chief executive Carrie Lam is betting the city’s future on building artificial islands. Read on for all these stories and more.

China Vanke Buying Stakes in Five Projects From CFLD

China Fortune Land Development, a real estate developer focused around Beijing, plans to sell stakes in five of its subsidiaries to property giant China Vanke under an agreement that will also see the pair join forces.

A Vanke unit will pay CNY3.2 billion (USD470 million) for shares in the CFLD subsidiaries based in Zhuozhou, Langfang and Bazhou in Hebei province, the seller said in a statement today. The target companies own about 340,000 square meters of land around the Chinese capital. Read more>>

Carrie Lam Pushes Reclamation as Path to HK’s Future

HONG KONG’S leader promised on Wednesday to ease the city’s chronic housing shortage by boosting the supply of land through reclamation and redevelopment projects and allocate more space for public housing.

Soaring real estate prices have given Hong Kong a dubious ranking as the city with the greatest bubble risk, according to the latest UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index, and angered many of its residents. Read more>>

More Discounts Could Be on Way as Mainland Developer Sales Slump

China’s seven-day Golden Week holiday used to be a busy time for developers, but not this time.

Analysts expect the weakest October in recent memory and see developers offering more price cuts after sales in 31 cities, monitored by property consultancy CRIC, fell 27 per cent year on year. Read more>>

Shop Rents in Hong Kong’s Central Could Drop 10% This Year

Hit by factors that include the escalating trade war between China and the United States, shop rents in Hong Kong’s Central district could drop by up to 10 per cent this year, growth in overall office rents could ease further and home prices might drop by 40 per cent in two years, according to analysts.

Demand for retail property in Central was consistently weak, with vacancy rates rising to 7.1 per cent this quarter from 4.3 per cent in the April to June period, according to consultancy Cushman & Wakefield. The prices of shops in the district also dropped, by 1.8 per cent to HK$836 per square foot, this quarter. Read more>>

Savills Expands India Business

UK-based real estate advisor, Savills, has expanded its business into a full-service platform.

“We had started with a small presence in 2015 with office leasing and project management business in Bengaluru, and has now expanded in Mumbai and NCR. Soon, we would be entering Hyderabad. In the future, Chennai and Pune will be the cities were we would be setting up our base,” said, Christian F. Mancini, CEO, Asia Pacific. The company is already a key player in Asia-Pacific and the UK. Read more>>

JLL Appoints Chirag Agrawal to India Capital Markets Team

JLL, India’s leading real estate professional services firm, today announced the appointment of Chirag Agrawal as the Managing Director & Head of Investment Banking in its Capital Markets team.

Based in Mumbai, Chirag will be responsible for the Firm’s Central Capital Markets Businesses, grouped under its Investment Banking Core such as Cross Border Capital, Equity & Debt Advisory, Mid-markets, Alternatives, Retail Capital Markets and Industrial Capital Markets. Read more>>

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