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Frasers Centrepoint bails out of Arsenal apartment deal

Posted on 1 Oct 2009 | Comments Off

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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Posted in Developers, Overseas Property

Tagged Frasers Centrepoint, Highbury Square, London Property, UK Property

London luxury home prices rise 4%

Posted on 29 Sep 2009 | Comments Off

Broker attributes surge to shortage of prime properties

Luxury-home prices in central London rose 4 per cent in the third quarter from the previous three months as buyers competed for fewer properties, Savills plc said.

Recovering: Home prices in England and Wales rose 4.9% from March through July, lifting the average value to £196,338 (S$442,000). Ultra-prime properties cost an average of £15 million

Houses and apartments worth more than £1 million (S$2.3 million) in the most expensive areas fell 4.9 per cent on an annual basis, the property broker said in a statement on Friday.

The biggest quarterly increases were in the districts of Chelsea, Kensington and Belgravia in west London. The annual decline narrowed from 11.5 per cent at the end of the second quarter.

‘There isn’t enough property on the market in prime areas and priced attractively to satisfy demand,’ said Camilla Dell, managing partner of Black Brick Property Solutions LLC, which finds and buys homes for wealthy customers. Her company, which has advised on £45 million of property deals this year, participated in closed-bid auctions for two multimillion-pound homes in London last week, she said.

The number of homes for sale is about 25 per cent less than the average for the past five years, London-based Savills estimates. Demand for luxury properties increased after values fell by about 18 per cent from the market’s peak in September 2007, the broker said. The pound’s weakness also made purchases cheaper for overseas buyers. Sterling slid about 20 per cent against the euro and the dollar since the peak. Continue reading →