London condo sale is world’s priciest
A $198 million penthouse that will overlook Hyde Park broke the record for the most expensive condo sale in London — and most likely the world, the Times of London reported.
The foreign minister of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Jassem al Thani, signed a contract for the largest flat in the Richard Rogers-designed One Hyde Park project, which will have 86 units and be completed in two years. Amenities in the security-conscious building are reported to include bullet-resistant walls and windows, private elevators with eye scanners and panic rooms. Two of the other penthouses have also been sold in the condo, where prices run as high as $9,914 per square foot.
The deal caps a booming market of multimillion dollar homes in the London area, where properties valued above $10 million are seeing price increases of 50 percent per year.
Investors target second-tier cities in China
Competition in China’s major cities has led investors to consider previously ignored “second-tier” cities like Chongqing in hopes of finding higher returns, according to the International Herald Tribune.
Although it does not have the cachet of Shanghai or Beijing, Chongqing has a population of 4.1 million and a regional population of more than 31 million — making it the country’s largest population center. China has 93 cities with populations of more than one million, and 20 cities with populations of more than five million.
While there is no formal definition of a first-tier or second-tier city in China, the Knight Frank real estate office in Hong Kong identifies 60 Chinese cities as second-tier or higher. Many of them are located near the eastern coast, or inland in regions at the heart of industrial growth in China.
Investment is growing as China quietly enacted its first law that explicitly protects private property in March. All land in China is owned by the state, and buyers trade only the right to use property on it for up to 70 years. The new law is intended to address the disposition of property after that term expires.
Europe’s tallest apartment tower to rise in Leeds
Leeds in northern England will be home to Western Europe’s tallest residential high-rise in 2010.
The Lumiere, a two-tower, 54-story project, will be built by London-based development company Yoo and designed by Philippe Starck. Yoo aims to raise “vertical villages” that bring the feel of a traditional village to an urban center, the International Herald Tribune reported. The connected building will provide lots of common space, services and shops.
Yoo’s other projects include tall residential towers in Boston, Toronto, Mexico, Sydney, Hong Kong and Tel Aviv. The company’s most ambitious current project is the three-tower Icon Brickell complex in Miami.
Spanish vacation home prices poised for fall
High loans terms facing developers could cause a slump in the Spanish vacation homes market, the International Herald Tribune reported.
Some Spanish developers are paying five times more to borrow than U.S. developers. And vacation home prices may drop as much as 10 percent this year.
Although four million homes in Spain were sold to foreigners in the last 10 years, real estate spending by foreigners dropped 11 percent in 2006. There was also a 10 percent drop in new mortgages to Spanish families. RE/MAX International cut prices by as much as 26 percent on more than 5,000 homes in Spain in January. Still, the average price for a Spanish home in December was $367,000, twice what it was in 2000.