Hines JV Wins $346M Loan for India Office Project and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

Leading today’s real estate news, US developer Hines has won a loan for an office project in northern India, while a Korean REIT buys up 20 floors of a central Seoul high rise.

Also in the headlines, Singapore’s Millennium & Copthorne Hotels has begun cutting staff and disgraced WeWork founder Adam Neumann is liquidating more of his luxury homes.

Hines-DLF JV Wins $346M Loan for Gurugram Office Project

A joint venture between India’s largest property developer DLF Ltd and global real estate firm Hines has secured a construction loan of ₹2,600 crore ($346 million) from HDFC Ltd for an upcoming office project in Gurugram.

Last year, Hines and DLF had formed a JV to develop an office project at Udyog Vihar Phase-V at an investment of ₹1,900 crore. The project will be developed on 11.76 acres owned by the JV, for which DLF had bid a record ₹1,496 crore when Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corp. auctioned the land parcel in February 2018. Read more>>

Korea’s Shinhan Alpha REIT Makes $201M Seoul Office Investment

Shinhan Alpha REIT rolled out plans to buy 37,600 square meters of office space in Twincity Namsan in central Seoul for 238.6 billion won ($201.6 million) from KB Asset Management, a filing showed Aug. 19.

The property occupies 20 floors of the 30-story commercial building with tenants including CJ OliveNetworks, Sketchers Korea and Maersk Korea. Read more>>

Activist Investors Lobby Govt on ESR-Sabana REIT Buyout

QUARZ Capital Management said on Wednesday that it, together with other minority shareholders, looks forward to receiving guidance and support from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Singapore Exchange Regulation (SGX Regco) on the proposed merger between Sabana Shari’ah Compliant Industrial Real Estate Investment Trust (Sabana REIT) and ESR-REIT.

In a second attempt at a merger, ESR- REIT announced last month that it plans to acquire all units in Sabana in exchange for new ESR- REIT units at a gross exchange ratio of 0.94 times. Read more>>

CDL’s Millennium Hotels to Cut 159 Jobs

Millennium Hotels and Resorts will cut 159 jobs – or 15.2 per cent of its headcount here – as part of a review of its local office and hotel operations amid the pandemic-induced downturn.

“This is a difficult but inevitable move,” said a company statement yesterday. “The global pandemic and economic fallout have hit the hotels hard.” Read more>>

WeWork’s Adam Neumann Sells Westchester County Estate for Over $3M

WeWork’s embattled ex-CEO Adam Neumann and his wife, Rebekah Paltrow Neumann, are continuing their massive real estate sell-off.

The couple, who have kept a low profile since Neumann’s September 2019 ouster from the coworking company he co-founded, sold their Westchester County estate for close to its asking price of $3.39 million. Read more>>

China Commercial Real Estate Deal Volume Jumped 95% in Q2

Property buyers piled into China’s commercial and retail real estate in the three months ended June even as the country was barely out of its coronavirus outbreak, outpacing demand across the rest of the Asia-Pacific region, according to a report.

Second-quarter investment volume jumped 95 per cent to US$8.4 billion compared with last year, according to data by Real Capital Analytics (RCA). First-half volume fell 23 per cent from last year to US$14 billion, owing to nationwide quarantines to contain the coronavirus outbreak in the first three months of 2020, the data showed. Read more>>

Looser Mortgage Rules Not Expected to Revive Hong Kong Market

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s move to relax loan rules for the first time in more than a decade is unlikely to provide a significant boost for a commercial property market battered by the coronavirus pandemic and a deep recession.

Hong Kong’s central bank late on Wednesday (Aug 19) raised the loan-to-value ratio cap for commercial properties to 50 per cent from 40 per cent, allowing buyers to borrow more money to purchase office and retail space. The move goes into effect on Thursday. Read more>>

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