Investing in Property – News and Markets August 09

Real estate sales in Jordan plummet; Qatar house rents have fallen 35%; Dubai prices fall 17%; Hawaii's luxury condo market hit by swine flu fears and recession; Hugh Hefner needs to sell a house as financial problems increase.

If anyone was thinking of believing the twisted statistics being pumped out by the governments and newspapers, this is a representative selection of headlines that might persuade you that perhaps, just perhaps, the problems are not all over in the housing markets.

Jordan - Land sales during the first half of this year declined by over 50 per cent to stand at 30,403 transactions, compared with 65,385 in the same period of 2008. According to Department of Lands and Survey (DLS) figures, sales of residential apartments also dropped by 28 per cent, with 8,006 units sold in the first six months of 2009 compared with 11,190 apartments sold in the same period of last year. Jordan Times

Qatar -  Thanks to slackening demand and oversupply of residential units, house rents have come down by between 30 and 35 percent, say real estate agents. The demand for housing is usually low during the lean summer months but picks up subsequently. This year, though, property market operators say they do not expect any major improvements after the long summer break. The Peninsula

Dubai - Owner behavior is preventing the leasing market from reaching a price floor, but they are just delaying the inevitable, indicates Landmark Advisory's Q309 Dubai and Abu Dhabi Real Estate Report. In an oversupplied market like Dubai, price floors are consumer driven. Jesse Downs, Landmark Advisory's Director of Research and Advisory Services, said "landlords are opting out of the market because of lower rents creating a temporary respite in the price correction process. This short term decline in supply is a market distortion, which will end. Real prices will be determined by what Dubai residents are willing to pay." investing in real estate in Dubai

Hawaii - The Hawaii luxury condo market is taking a beating along with the rest of the luxury real estate markets, with rising foreclosures, but this is causing issues for those in good financial standing as well as those foreclosed upon. The amount of foreclosures is meaning that, in some cases, as many as 20% of the units in some developments are delinquent in paying maintenance fees to the homeowner’s association or condo boards. Hawaii luxury condos

Playboy - It’s not easy being a world-famous playboy in the Great Recession. Just ask Hugh Hefner, the 83-year-old founder of Playboy magazine - which made its name in the fifties by publishing the short stories of Ian Fleming and Vladimir Nabokov in between glossy pictorials of lightly dressed and generously proportioned young women. With  Mr Hefner’s Playboy Enterprises media empire facing mounting losses and plunging revenues, the ageing publisher sold his ’English Manor’ in Los Angeles over the weekend for $18 million — a full $10 million less than the asking price. Government press release farm doomed to extinction