Luxury Condo Prices in Beijing have nosedived.
Volatility reigns, both in the luxury home market and other luxury markets.
Private home sales in Singapore increase after five months of declines. Largely due to heavy discounting and slow sales from the previous months.. Straits Times.
A luxury home development in Dorset in the UK has been vandalised with graffiti. Protesters, angry at being “priced out of the market,” by wealthy London bankers filling the village with second homes that are rarely visited. East Portlemouth has been nicknamed the “Ghost Village,” with more than 60% of the properties being second homes. West Morning News.
MIPIM, the property industry gathering in Cannes, France, saw attendances drop from 28,000 to just 10,000 this year, and the mood was “sombre.” The Telegraph.
London luxury home prices fell the most in more than 33 years, since records began being kept, with properties over £1 million dropping by 23% year to date. London depends heavily on bank bonuses to keep prices high and there are expected to be another 60,000 job losses in the financial services sector in London over the next two years. Estate agents are being typically optimistic though and expect Russian buyers to bail out the market any time soon. Bloomberg.
The Washington Times reports that “luxury homes for sale dirt cheap,” in Florida. Condos available from as little as $25,000 as the market glut continues. Washington Times.
Donald Trump is facing yet another law suit after the Baja Trump hotel-condo resort went broke. The developer in question has apparently drawn all the money from the escrow account for “building works,” but all they have to show is a hole in the ground – literally. Trump is now claiming not to have been the developer and merely lent his name to the project. for a fee presumably. CBS News. With Trump Entertainment in bankrupcy once again, the Trump International Hotel and Tower Dubai cancelled and refusing to refund deposits, plus a rather large amount of pending lawsuits this year, one has to wonder what the name Trump will be worth by the time the crisis has finished running it’s course.
Luxury Yacht maker Ferretti goes broke owing $1.3 billion
Further afield in the luxury markets, rather shockingly, Ferretti Yachts have gone broke. To the tune of $1.3 billion. By any stretch of the imagination, that is an awfully big debt for a boatmaker, luxury or otherwise and efforts are underway to restructure the debt and refinance. Royal Bank of Scotland, who also went broke last year and had to be bailed out by the British government are considering a debt-for-equity swap as part of the rescue. Not sure how well that is going to go down with the British taxpayer, but Ferretti’s proposed luxury beachfront residences in the Dubai Marina look decidedly shaky now.
Prices of luxury apartments in Beijing have “nosedived,” with ex-pats left in untenable positions. An estimated 20,000 of the 70,000 South Koreans living in Beijing have returned home as the own currency collapsed, and managers of foreign interests in China are being asked to take pay cuts of as much as 50%. China Daily. There are also an estimated ten million square feet of empty office space in Beijing currently, so look for a very slow recovery here.
