A number of British contractors in the UAE have not been paid by the local developers – some are as much as six months in arrears and the British business secretary, Lord Mandelson has approached Dubai and Abu Dhabi’s rulers Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai, and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi for assurances that the situtuation will be remedied.
More on UAE Property Developers Failing to pay British Contractors
As the housing crisis in the United States drags on and on, and as the banking crisis in the United States gets worse and worse, ordinary people are beginning to float some fairly obvious ideas that nevertheless get no uptake because…Well, because it’s complicated.
More on Vacant Houses, Homeless People, and Jedi Mind Tricks
During the late 90′s, snapping up an apartment on New York City’s Central Park took a fast pen and a loaded checkbook, but no more: According to a recent New York Times article, luxury real estate in the city is not only depreciating severely, it isn’t even moving now at the bargain prices.
More on Luxury Central Park Apartments Languish on NYC Market
French property prices have come down to earth with a bang, according a number of professional bodies, including the French National Federation of Real Estate Agents (Fédération Nationale de l’Immobilier or FNAIM)
More on Property Prices in France – No Soft Landing says FNAIM
The Burj Dubai reached it’s final height of 818 meters recently, but we are hearing an interesting rumor that, the Burj Dubai is now wholly owned by the Abu Dhabi government (see the recent Dubai bond issue) and as “punishment,” for their vaulted ambitions, the building will be left empty for at least one year after it is finished being fitted out.
More on Property Investment Rumors – Burj Dubai Will sit Empty for a Year
Macquarie Groupis probably one of Australia’s best known of Australia’s commercial banks. Now it might also be the first financial group to be bailed out by the Federal government’s guarantee to commercial property investors.
At the end of 2006 there were about 100,000 bank-owned properties for sale in the United States. Today, thanks to the ongoing tsunami of new foreclosures there are over 700,000, and that number is climbing.
The over valued, over leveraged buy-to-let property market in the UK is now coming to terms with a new reality. The lenders had written clauses into many buy-to-let mortgages which insist on a certain level of equity being held in a property, and most buy to let mortgages taken out in the last few years are now falling below that ratio. Terms vary, but several banks have already exercised their right to insist on a capital injection from the borrower, as property prices in Britain continue to decline.
With credit markets still tight in the United States, owners of vacation homes and second homes are turning to fractional sales as a way to cash out some of the equity in their homes without applying for a (now hard to get) home equity loan, and without necessarily even giving up the house.
As a small property investor, I always keep an eye on what is going on in the news, particularly what is being reported as “news” by the so-called professional news suppliers. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the newspapers are attempting to “talk the market up,” in an effort to re-inflate the property bubble that allowed their advertisers to keep paying their bills. But – reading between the lines and comparing the actual news stories with the spin tells a very different story.
