Wheelock’s Douglas Woo is ready for some fun in the sun at Repulse Bay (Getty Images)
In today’s roundup of regional news headlines, Douglas Woo of Wheelock & Co bags a luxe apartment in Hong Kong’s Repulse Bay, and mainland developer Sunac warns of a 2022 loss on the order of $4 billion.
Douglas Woo Buys Repulse Bay Luxury Apartment for HK$59.8M
Hong Kong property heir Douglas Woo bought an apartment in upscale Repulse Bay for HK$59.8 million ($7.6 million), as the city’s luxury market is just picking up amid its border reopening.
The chairman of Wheelock & Co, one of Hong Kong’s biggest real estate firms, bought the luxury home this month, according to a Land Registry filing. Situated within a 49-year-old development, the three-bedroom unit has an area of 1,583 square feet (147 square metres), translating to a per square foot price of HK$37,776. Read more>>
Sunac Warns of Losses for Second Straight Year
Sunac China Holdings on Thursday warned of losses for a second straight year as a crisis in the country’s property sector continued to weigh on the demand for new houses and its earnings.
The mainland developer expects to report an attributable loss for 2022 in the range of RMB 27 billion to RMB 28 billion ($3.9 billion to $4 billion). It logged an attributable loss of RMB 38.26 billion in 2021. Read more>>
Google Leases Over 3M Square Feet of Office Space in Bengaluru
Google has recently taken on a lease of over 3 million square feet (278,709 square metres) of space in Bengaluru in six separate deals with monthly rentals ranging from INR 58 to INR 231 ($0.70 to $2.80) per square foot, registration documents showed.
The Google entities that have rented the premises are Google India Pvt Ltd and Google Connect Services. The US-based tech giant will be paying INR 33 crore ($4 million) a month as starting rent. Read more>>
Evergrande Restructuring a Warning to China’s Other Creditors
China Evergrande has finally laid out a debt restructuring plan for its offshore creditors. The pain for its long-suffering debt investors, however, isn’t over yet.
That also gives a warning to owners of other offshore property debt. Many investors piled into those bonds on the assumption that Beijing would never allow a truly widespread property bust because of the fraught politics of homeownership in China. That assumption proved wrong, and now they are likely to pay a steep price. Read more>>
WeWork India Back in Growth Mode, Says Country CEO
At a time when WeWork is cutting jobs globally to reduce costs, its Indian franchisee is back in growth mode with plans to add 10 new locations by August across six key metro cities.
“Our dream is to have an India IPO story and continue to grow our top and bottom lines,” said Karan Virwani, CEO of WeWork India. Read more>>
Japan Land Values Increase for Second Year in a Row
Japan’s nationwide assessed land values rose 1.6 percent in 2023, the second year in a row to see an increase.
The growth is apparent not only in urban centres but is also spreading to regional areas as the country emerges from the pandemic. Read more>>
Demand, Rents for APAC Life Sciences Properties Holding Up
Demand and rents for real estate occupied by life sciences companies in Asia Pacific have remained resilient despite a slowdown in revenues and venture capital funding, a CBRE report said Friday.
The industry’s continued focus on research and development, as well as the need to support such activities, has kept occupancy tight, with rents rising between 5 and 30 percent in the R&D clusters of China, Singapore and India. Read more>>
Unusually Large Loan Market Magnifies South Korea Housing Risk
South Korea’s property market risks an accelerated slide triggered by quirks in renting practices, an outcome that would put its sputtering economy under more pressure and test the confidence of investors already spooked by recent financial sector turmoil.
The vulnerability stems from the common choice of tenants to stump up outsized deposits known as jeonse, or key money, for landlords instead of paying monthly rent. This widespread practice supplies property owners with leveraged cash, putting jeonse at the heart of real estate speculation and financial imbalances in the country. Read more>>
Tune in again soon for more real estate news and be sure to follow @Mingtiandi on Twitter, or bookmark Mingtiandi’s LinkedIn page for headlines as they happen.
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