Asia real estate and outbound investment news
The most radically designed project of China’s most flamboyant real estate developer is largely finished, and the Wangjing area of Beijing’s Chaoyang district will soon feature 3 hump-shaped towers that have been likened to Chinese fans, or ship’s sails.
Wangjing SOHO was designed by Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, and consists of three curved towers reaching as high as 200 metres.
China’s real estate developers benefitted from a number of factors that made 2013 a banner year for housing sales, and helped drive double-digit growth in housing prices in most of the country’s major cities.
However, most analysts are now predicting more subdued conditions for 2014, including Bank of America, which recently published its prediction for the new year.
Real estate developer Sunac China Holdings Ltd. (1918), has been among the most aggressive acquirers of new land this year, and the firm’s confidence appears to be well-backed as it recently announced a 61 percent annual increase in sales.
While Shanghai’s Greenland Group was grabbing headlines this week with its billion dollar London deals, Beijing-based Macrolink Real Estate quietly secured deals worth a total of RMB 640 million (US$105 million) in Malaysia and South Korea.
The Shenzhen-listed firm’s Hong Kong unit is setting up a joint venture with a South Korean partner to acquire RMB 340 million (US$56 million) in land on South Korea’s Jeju island.
Perhaps not content with making obscene amounts of cash, China real estate tycoon and prominent micro-blogger Ren Zhiqiang seems to be on mission to find more ways to be offensive this week.
Only a few days after calling CCTV “the dumbest pig in the world,” for suggesting that the country’s property developers might not be paying their fair share of taxes, the chairman of Beijing-based Hua Yuan Real Estate Group set
China’s state-run real estate developers might be getting more market-oriented, or it could be that someone in the Shanghai city government realises that leasing out 220,000 square metres of office space is not a matter to be lef to chance.
In any case, the state-owned developers of the Shanghai Tower, have announced that they are seeking leasing agents to help fill the building.
China’s tech industry has been growing at double-digit rates for many years now, and the expansion of the country’s technology giants has started to have an impact on the office real estate market.
Examining the effect of the industry on Beijing’s Zhongguancun, a centre for high-tech firms, the Wall Street Journal finds that,
China’s Evergrande Real Estate became the third of the country’s major developers to declare 2013 sales in excess of RMB 100 billion this week, when the Hong Kong-listed company announced revenues of RMB 100.4 billion.
The company, which last month announced plans for setting up joint venture hospitals in China with America’s Harvard University, is
A REIT controlled by Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing is bucking a Hong Kong government proposal that would widen the scope of activity for real estate investment trusts listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Justin Chiu Kwok-hung, who heads Fortune REIT, a trust operated by Li’s Cheung Kong Holdings has stated that the proposal, which would allow REITs to engage in new project development may present too much risk.
