Property market out of flavour...but 4.25 to 1.25 that is an over reaction surely!

Lancaster Gate - dubbed the Lancasters is one of their projects in London. Are property prices falling in London...

From The Sunday Times
February 17, 2008
Super-rich snap up apartments in world's most expensive residential scheme

RECESSION, what recession? The super-rich are snapping up apartments at the world's most expensive residential scheme at Londons One Hyde Park as if they were going out of fashion.

According to data released exclusively to The Sunday Times, half of the 80 apartments at the luxury scheme designed by Richard Rogers have already been contracted to be sold even though the project will not be completed until 2010. Knight Frank, one of the estate agents handling the Knightsbridge development, said sales already totalled more than 500m and the average apartment price had reached 20m.

Wealthy oil barons, Russian oligarchs and hedge-fund managers are shelling out at prices that break down to almost 6,000 per square foot for the chance to own one of the apartments. That figure is up from 4,000 per square foot in late 2006.

The sales reflect Londons status as a global city, with 39% of the buyers hailing from Russia, 25% from the Middle East, 14% from Britain and 11% from continental Europe. The highest price paid for an apartment at the scheme is rumoured to be more than 100m. The interiors are the work of Candy & Candy, the interior design company run by Nick and Christian Candy, two brothers in their early thirties who have become multi-millionaires by creating fantasy homes for people with limitless budgets.

The site will have an underground passage to the nearby Mandarin Oriental hotel, where staff will be on hand to cater to residents needs.

CPC, the Guernsey-based investment company owned by Christian Candy, has an equity stake of more than a third in One Hyde Park. The scheme is also backed by Sheikh Hamad bin Jasim Jaber al-Thani, foreign minister of the Gulf state of Qatar.

Liam Bailey, head of residential research at Knight Frank, said sales of so-called super-prime homes in London worth 10m or above had more than doubled in the three months to the end of January compared with the same period last year.

He said: It is quite extraordinary the way the super-prime market has continued to surge ahead. Sales of homes worth 1m-5m have slowed, but once you get above 5m, and certainly above 10m, they are still powering ahead.

I'm holding for 100p yasmine once people realise property is on the turn.

70p is my target, along way to go yet

volume increasing as this is rising from out of the downtrend

up over 20% but want more...

yeah nice play with mnr, anyone have ideas on any other real estate plays?

TAP and OPF are good.

QED have tripled since their announcement...bodes well for MNR ;-) if they get their covenants relaxed too, considering they are already priced to go bust

MNR is steal mind you if they go bust they will be.

From standard.co.uk

'The vultures are hovering, so we must be at the bottom'


'Welcome to the bottom of the commercial property market. It must be, for today the world's biggest property agent says so. "The time to buy UK property is now," reckons CB Richard Ellis.

The message from the group, with 29,000 employees, is contained in an eight-page piece of research which concludes the combination of plunging prices and plunging interest rates means it is time for investors to open their wallets.

"Property yields are now approaching levels where, even with some realistic allowance for tenant fallout, the income will provide a substantial real return," says Peter Damesick, UK head of research at CBRE. "Equity-rich investors will have the field."

To translate: An office block rented out for half a million a year would have cost 10 million in 2007. The same block can now be had for 6 million. Happily the tenant is still paying 500,000 a year in rent. Don't worry about the price going up or down, says CBRE. Thanks to low borrowing costs you can make profit on the rental income alone.

But the agent adds three important caveats. First, the office block must be in a good spot. Second, you must be pretty sure the tenant is not going to go bust. Third, you must be able to raise the asking price.

That final provision is still, of course, the big snag. But the ever-enterprising property market is now busy figuring it out. Right now, a great deal of brainpower is going into setting up property funds to buy distressed assets.

One man busy helping to set up such funds is John Forbes, head of real estate for Europe at PricewaterhouseCoopers. "UK property looks cheap. A number of fund managers are looking to raise real-estate funds to take advantage of the UK recovery when it happens," he says.

These opportunity funds typically look to pull in between 50 million and 500 million from professional investors, or other funds. They can be quite lucrative for those setting them up. The fees lie between 3% and 5% of the money raised. Most of this will go to lawyers, bankers and advisers like CBRE and PwC, who both have expertise in setting up funds.

But there is a little-known group of intermediaries who are sometimes needed. If the promoters don't have good connections to investors, they can turn to so-called placement agents.

For a fee of between 1% and 2% of the money raised, these guys get investors to commit to paying cash when the "opportunity" fund goes live. Imagine your cut if you could raise 500 million. The smell of vulture hanging around the word "opportunity" means most of the new funds will have bland names like "UK Office Recovery Fund". But make no mistake. They are being set up to pick the carcass of other funds and property businesses that have been killed in the jaws of the negative-equity trap. The bottom of the market is a very bloody place.'

up up

Great share.

...and away she goes

My prediction is 25p sometime.

w bottom forming nicely

25p would only take us back to Jan 12 th.

Up 50% now.

relax it's only 50% up, wake me up when it's 300% lol

happy days at last, stelios are you interested in MNR, then you will have to BID against Kifin and perhaps Limitless...All IMHO please DYOR

this is just the beginning, back on peeps radars, more rises to come from this lowly bottom, any positive news and we could see this double in a day in the very near future IMHO

If you believe property has bottomed now is a great time to buy cheap property plays.

jumped ahead of itself, pull back is good and normal as profit takers depart, setting up for the next rise over time, who cares about the odd penny per share if it doubles from here on the next leg up

why should property prices have bottomed with companies laying off employees both commercial and domestic property prices still have quite some way to fall inmho? probably at least a further 15-20%.