International Property Journal - News and information on global property markets

Hoping to clamp down on speculators, China this week imposed new restrictions on foreign ownership of property.

Under the toughened up rules, foreigners will only be able to own one property on the mainland. And non-Chinese companies will only be able to purchase commercial real estate for their own use, according to published reports.

Individual buyers will also have to show proof of employment in China for at least one year before they can buy residential property.

The government clearly hopes the measures will stop investors from gobbling up apartments and driving up prices. But analysts believe the measures ultimately have little impact. Foreign investments accounted for only 0.8 percent of property last year, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Despite government efforts to dampen the market, buyers are still gobbling up luxury properties in Hong Kong.

The number of transactions of more than HK$20 million ($2.6 million) was up 86 percent in the first seven months of 2010, according to Bloomberg News. Overall, prices have jumped 50 percent in the last year, even though the government has tried to restrict the market, in the wake of fears that the property bubble may soon burst.

Demand for commercial property in Europe is growing, but it’s emerging markets leading the recovery, according to the latest survey by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

Data points to a “two speed” recovery, the RICS says. Emerging Asia and Latin America led the way in the third quarter, in particular China, Hong Kong, Brazil and Singapore.

While hardly a blast of optimism, Knight Frank’s just-released forecast for global residential property markets points to an industry returning to some degree of normalcy.

Sixty-one percent of countries surveyed by the property company reported positive value growth from 2009 to 2010, up from 35 percent in the previous 12 months. “Data from the second quarter of 2010 suggests that the recovery is continuing to spread,” Knight Frank says.

Shares in SouFun Holdings Ltd., which runs China’s largest online property site, jumped 73 percent on Friday after the company’s initial public offering in the United States.

In a shaky season for IPOs, the offering was seen as a success, pricing the company at a bit more than 14 times earnings. Two private equity firms, Connecticut-based General Atlantic and London-based Apax Partners, each announced plans to take a 19 percent stake in the company, a key player in China’s fast-growing online property business.

Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia were the strongest performing property markets in the world through the first part of 2010, while Europe continued to struggle with the economic tide.

Ireland was the worst performing market, posting a 16 percent drop in prices from a year earlier, compared to a 34 percent jump for Singapore, according to inflation-adjusted data tracked by the Global Property Guide.

The island where “Eat, Pray, Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert found love continues to block foreign ownership of property.

Bali attracts more than 2 million tourists a year--a number which is expected to grow when the movie version of Gilbert’s book is released in August. However, strict Constitutional restrictions on non-citizens directly owning land dampen international interest in real estate.

Jones Lang LaSalle’s latest study found global commercial real estate investment has more than doubled since the dark days of 2009, which makes for a nice headline.

But the real story was the disparity in investment activity from region to region. Asia, for example, saw investment volumes drop by 34 percent from the first quarter of 2010, despite increases in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Pondering this year’s Best Tall Building award winners, architecture geeks will find much to love and loath.

The annual awards, presented by the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, recognize projects that have made “extraordinary contributions to the advancement of tall buildings and the urban environment, and that achieve sustainability at the highest and broadest level.”

In others words, skyscrapers must show something more than a little flash and sparkle to win. To their credit, CTBUH judges don’t simply pander to the outrageous towers designed to gain attention, projects that offer plenty of bells and whistles on the outside, but little engineering on the inside.

That said, skyscrapers are meant to be ostentatious and grand, jaw-dropping and brash, inspiring devoted followings with their flair. Some may disagree, but this year’s regional winners deliver the goods:

Soon after VinaCapital Real Estate launched the Danang Beach Resort in 2007, the sales results forced the developers to rewrite the business plan.

“The original target audience was mostly international, with pricing starting at $1.2 million,” said David Blackhall, the deputy managing director of real estate for VinaCapital Group, the Vietnam-focused firm with $1.7 billion in assets under management.

The 260-hectare mixed development with two golf courses was designed to offer global investors interested in Vietnam the type of resort opportunity they might find in Phuket or the Caribbean. With the first golf course designed by Greg Norman, the beach resort’s original layout included 600 residential units.