A rendering of the Shibuya Upper West Project (Source: Snohetta)
In today’s roundup of regional news headlines, Japanese conglomerate Tokyu announces plans for a Tokyo mixed-use project, Hong Kong’s Sun Hung Kai Properties offers deep discounts to apartment buyers, and Chinese regulators try to tamp down the mortgage boycott crisis.
Tokyu, L Catterton Unveil Plans for Shibuya Upper West Project
Tokyu Corporation, L Catterton Real Estate and Tokyu Department Store this past week unveiled plans for the Shibuya Upper West Project, a mixed-use project in central Tokyo’s Shibuya district.
Located at the intersection of the Shoto and Yoyogi residential areas, the site currently occupied by Tokyu’s flagship department store will feature retail, a small luxury hotel and rental residences. Targeting completion in fiscal 2027, the Shibuya Upper West Project will also benefit from access to large parks and public transport. Read more>>
SHKP Offers Discounts, Deferred Payment at New Territories Project
Sun Hung Kai Properties is selling its newest apartments in Hong Kong at double-digit discounts and offering deferred payments to selected customers, becoming the latest developer to offer incentives to bow to first-home buyers’ demand for affordable housing.
The first 165 apartments in Phase 1A at the Novo Land project in Tuen Mun were priced at an average of HK$13,188 ($1,680) per square foot, about 12 percent cheaper than the launch price last month at CK Asset Holding’s Grand Jete project in the same neighbourhood, according to SHKP. Read more>>
China Banking Regulator Tries to Calm Mortgage Boycott
China’s banking watchdog has officially assured the public that loans will be provided to qualified developers to help complete unfinished residential projects, as the mortgage boycott crisis continues to spread across the country.
Banks will meet developers’ financing needs where it is reasonable, Liu Zhongrui, a senior official from the statistics and risk assessment department of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, said at a Thursday press conference, the first official remark about the unfinished flats that led to homeowners suspending mortgage payments. Read more>>
Mapletree Logistics Trust Posts 5% Rise in Q1 DPU
Mapletree Logistics Trust on Thursday reported a distribution per unit of S$0.02268 for the first quarter ended 30 June, up 5 percent from the year-earlier DPU.
Amount distributable to unitholders in the first quarter rose 17.2 percent to S$108.6 million (now $78.1 million). Read more>>
Mapletree North Asia Commercial Trust Q1 Net Property Income Up 4.1%
Mall and office landlord Mapletree North Asia Commercial Trust on Thursday said its net property income for the first fiscal quarter ended June came in at S$81.5 million (now $58.6 million), up 4.1 percent from the corresponding quarter last year.
In a voluntary business update, MNACT said the improved NPI figure was due to the full-quarter contribution from Hewlett-Packard Japan Headquarters Building, which it acquired in June of last year, as well as a lower quantum of rental relief granted for Festival Walk, a Hong Kong shopping strip, compared with the same period last year. Read more>>
How Boris Johnson’s Docklands Business Hub Turned Into a Ghost Town
It was billed by Boris Johnson as a dazzling “beacon for Asian investors”: a £1.7 billion ($2 billion) complex of waterside offices that would become “London’s third great business area” after the City and Canary Wharf. As mayor of London in 2013, he promised a dynamic “city within a city”, humming 24 hours a day, with Asian firms lured by tax breaks working on Beijing time and breathing new life into a long-derelict stretch of East London’s Royal Docks.
Almost a decade since Johnson signed the deal with the Chinese developer ABP to build his dockside fantasy, the area is a ghost town. About a tenth of the project has been realised: a row of pristine office blocks marooned in a sea of tarmac and overgrown scrubland, with no tenants in sight. Last week, after years of uncertainty and missed deadlines, the Greater London Authority finally kicked the developer off the project, citing lack of progress on the scheme. Read more>>
China’s Credit Market Rocked by More Debt Delays, Plunging Bonds
China’s credit market is now showing stress on an almost daily basis, as a worsening property crisis shatters assumptions about safe borrowers and even Chinese investors turn against troubled debtors.
The country’s junk US dollar bonds were on the brink of record lows Thursday, as a state-backed developer sought payment delays on $1.6 billion worth of dollar notes. In other signs of stress, debt of a private builder deemed healthy just months ago has sunk, while creditors spurned a restructuring plan by the parent of BMW’s China partner. Read more>>
China Suffering ‘Rapid’ Slowdown as ‘Systemic’ Problems Surface
China’s economic rebound may face a greater uphill battle than Beijing would otherwise like the world to believe thanks to pressure within the real estate sector and “frustrations” in the banking industry.
“China’s economy has been slowing for quite some time,” Craig Singleton, a fellow at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital. “What we’re witnessing now is a rapid economic slowdown.” Read more>>
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