Category Archives: Overseas Property

Frasers Centrepoint bails out of Arsenal apartment deal

Posted on 1 Oct 2009 | Comments Off on Frasers Centrepoint bails out of Arsenal apartment deal

It’s likely to have forfeited its deposit of 10% of the £47m purchase price

FRASERS Centerpoint has pulled out of a £47 million (S$106 million) deal to buy 120 apartments at the site of English football club Arsenal’s old stadium, likely forfeiting its deposit.

Highbury Holdings – a unit of the holding company that owns Arsenal Football Club – has now sold the apartments plus some 25 others for £41.4 million to London & Stamford, an AIM-listed property group.

Reports in February said that Frasers, a unit of listed Fraser & Neave, had put down a 10 per cent non-refundable deposit for flats in the Highbury Square project but was unwilling to pay the rest in full upfront.

It instead proposed to pay the sum, reportedly £15 million, on a deferred schedule but the offer was blocked by one of the club’s banks.

Frasers yesterday said that it was ‘pleased’ the units had been sold. ‘The price achieved is a clear indication that the market has turned in London and that there is significant interest from investors in acquiring prime London property,’ a spokeswoman told BT. ‘Our decision not to complete enables us to focus on our existing property portfolio and our direct development projects in London.’ Continue reading →

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HK’s luxury homes in short supply: Swire Pacific

Posted on 1 Oct 2009 | Comments Off on HK’s luxury homes in short supply: Swire Pacific

Swire Pacific Ltd, which is building architect Frank Gehry’s first Asian residential project, said luxury homes in Hong Kong are in short supply as mainland Chinese buyers swooped for apartments.

‘There is relatively short supply at the high end,’ Martin Cubbon, an executive director of the company and chief executive officer of unlisted unit Swire Properties Ltd, said. There is ‘enormous liquidity and buying’ from Chinese residents, he told reporters here.

Luxury home prices in Hong Kong have climbed as much as 28 per cent in the first nine months of the year, as low mortgage costs and interest rates on savings deposits fuelled buying, Colliers International Ltd said. The project designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Mr Gehry may be rented at record rates, Swire’s Mr Cubbon said.

The ‘dynamics are all very positive’ for Hong Kong’s residential market, he said. Swire rose 0.7 per cent to close at HK$89.05 in Hong Kong trading. The stock has surged 67 per cent this year, beating the benchmark Hang Seng Index’s 46 per cent advance.

Average luxury home prices may rise by between 5 and 10 per cent in the next 6 to 12 months, Ricky Poon, executive director of residential sales at Colliers, said. Continue reading →

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