GIC is betting big on European students
Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund heads to Europe for the second time this week to pick up an additional portfolio of student housing with student accommodation specialist GSA, while Kerry Properties shows its confidence in the Hong Kong market with a $940 million site acquisition in Kowloon. Meanwhile, Nanjing settles on a novel approach to ensuring marital stability, and much more, if you just keep reading.
GIC Invests in 2nd European Student Housing Deal This Week
Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and global student accommodation specialists GSA yesterday announced a partnership to invest in student accommodation in Germany – their second such investment in the past week.
The cornerstone investment of the partnership is a portfolio of close to 1,000 student beds, which GSA acquired in June.
The portfolio features properties in Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Munster and Dresden as well as a pipeline of 1,500 beds, which will be expanded through investments, developments and in working with local property companies. Read more>>
Kerry Buys HK’s Most Expensive Site in 3 Years for $940M
Kerry Properties Ltd. outbid Hong Kong giants Cheung Kong Property Holdings Ltd. and Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd. with a HK$7.3 billion ($940 million) offer for government land in the territory’s Kowloon district, the highest price in three-and-a-half years.
The price works out to about HK$21,206 per square foot of saleable area, according to calculations by Bloomberg News based on figures released by the Hong Kong Lands Department on Wednesday. It’s the most that a piece of land has fetched in a government sale since March 2013, when Kerry Properties paid HK$11.7 billion for a parcel in the Ho Man Tin district of Kowloon. Read more>>
Nanjing Hopes to Cut Divorce Rate by Restricting Home Sales to Singles
Nanjing, capital city of east China’s Jiangsu Province, announced on Wednesday that it would restrict home purchases of single adult residents.
The measure was an upgrade of a previous one, which was rolled out only 10 days ago to ban families of registered residents that already own two or more houses in the main districts from buying new homes.
In order to close the loophole that some couples resorted to divorce to dodge the restriction, the new rule said that single adult residents, unmarried or divorced, will not be allowed to buy a second home in the districts, according to a statement issued by the municipal government. Read more>>
Fosun Sets Sights on Nearly $1 Bil in Brazilian Hospitals
Chinese conglomerate Fosun International Ltd is in advanced talks to acquire Hospital da Bahia, a Brazilian hospital in the northeastern city of Salvador, for about 1 billion reais ($308 million), according to a newspaper report on Wednesday.
Brazilian business daily Valor Economico reported, without saying how it obtained the information, that Fosun was also looking to spend an additional 2 billion reais on other acquisitions to form a Brazilian hospital chain. Read more>>
Singapore’s UOL and UIC Team Up for $244M Residential Project
A joint venture between UOL Group and United Industrial Corporation (UIC) has bought a privatised former HUDC estate in Potong Pasir Avenue 1 for S$334.2 million.
The 175-unit estate, known as Raintree Gardens, was launched for collective sale in September. The purchase price roughly works out to about S$1.89 million per unit.
Property experts had said the owners could get over S$315 million, or about $1.8 million per unit. Read more>>
Number of SG Realtors Slides by 5% in One Year as Market Struggles
With the property market still softening, figures released on Wednesday (Oct 5) showed that the number of licensed real estate agents in Singapore fell by 1,583 to 30,423 in the year to March 2016.
That’s about 5 per cent lower than the 32,006 agents in the year ago period.
The figures from the annual report of the Council for Estate Agencies (CEA) also showed that 1,307 agents joined the industry, down from 1,654 in the previous fiscal year. Read more>>
Tune in again tomorrow for more news, and be sure to follow @Mingtiandi on Twitter for headlines as they happen.
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