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| Unique Visitors: 14 |
| Total Unique Visitors: 115428 |
| Visitors Out: 2404 |
| Total Visitors Out: 2413 |
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| South Africans ease gloom in the City of London |
| 2008-05-10 16:13:00 |
It will take 107,000 sq ft at the 240,000 sq ft building which completes in September. The bank, advised by Spring 4, will relocate from its existing office at Cannon Bridge House where it has a lease expiry in September 2009.The terms of the deal have not been disclosed but it is thought to have agreed a rent of around £57.50/sq ft on a 10 year lease.The deal will be a significant boost to the City of London occupational market which has seen little letting activity in deals of more than 50,000 sq ft since the start of the year.
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| Banks play UK real estate debt roulette |
| 2008-05-03 02:34:00 |
Banks are playing with fire by delaying foreclosure on UK commercial property borrowers who are in breach of their loan terms.Property finance professionals say hundreds of loans secured against many millions of pounds of commercial properties are in breach of terms called loan-to-value covenants the result of a 16 percent nosedive in values since last summer's market peak.These covenants tie the loans to a percentage of the value of the asset they are secured against. Breaches triggered swift foreclosures and repossessions in previous downturns. This time many lenders are waiving those rights for fear of being saddled with assets they can't sell.
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| UK House Prices Fall On Yr 1st Time Since 06 |
| 2008-04-29 02:52:00 |
U.K. house prices posted their first annual decline in more than two years in April as economic uncertainty and the global credit crisis further reduced activity in the residential property market, housing valuation company Hometrack said Monday.House prices fell an average 0.6% in April, the seventh consecutive monthly fall, after dipping 0.2% in March, it said. On the year, prices fell 0.9% after rising 0.4% in March, the first drop since February 2006 and the weakest performance since they slumped 1.0% in January 2006."While the availability of finance is impacting on demand in certain segments, the reality is that weak confidence is effectively resulting in a buyers strike with households sitting on the sidelines and waiting to see how events unfold," Hometrack Director of Research Richard Donnell said in a statement.
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| The experts views on mortgages and the housing market |
| 2008-04-24 18:42:00 |
The average asking price for a home in the UK is now £239,521, just 1.3 per cent higher than a year ago, according to Rightmove, the property website.Rightmove says that asking prices have dropped 0.1 per cent in the past month, a sharp contrast to average increases of 2.8 per cent recorded each April since 2002. House prices across the Bidwells region - Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Suffolk, Norfolk and North Essex - fell 3.8 per cent on average.
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| Vacant Homes in U.K. Prove Speculator Nightmare |
| 2008-04-18 11:06:00 |
April 17 (Bloomberg) -- Richard Lee spent 5.3 million pounds ($10 million) buying 20 rental homes across the U.K. with just 150,000 pounds of his own money. Today, the properties are worth about 60 percent less and owned by the banks that financed the purchases.Lee was one of thousands enticed by one of Europe's top five best-performing residential property markets during the past decade. Now repossessions are mounting and properties stand empty as many investors fail to find the tenants needed to cover their mortgages after a building boom flooded cities, especially Leeds and Manchester, with apartments.The unraveling buy-to-rent investment market contributed to a 2.5 percent drop in home prices last month, the biggest since 1992, a report by mortgage lender HBOS Plc shows.
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| At least 4,000 U.K. real-estate agents may shut their doors |
| 2008-04-15 10:50:00 |
At least 4,000 U.K. real-estate agents from the 12,000 estimated to be in business may shut their doors by next year because of the collapse of the real- estate market, the London-based Times reported, citing Robin King, a director of real-estate agent network Movewithus.The network's sales have dropped between 30 percent and 50 percent since last year, the newspaper said.The Property Shop, an east England-based real estate agency, shut nine of its 10 offices and dismissed about 30 employees in April, just before its parent company, Alexander Partnership, went into administration, the newspaper said.
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| UAE investors get opportunity to buy property in London’s billionaire' row |
| 2008-04-12 11:27:00 |
London real estate - Barratt, leading real estate developer and house builder in the UK, has offered international investors including UAE investors the chance to buy a property on London’s ‘billionaire’s row’-The Bishops Avenue. Barratt has launched the latest homes to be built on ‘The Bishops Avenue’ named Allingham Court, a development of 12 exclusive apartments within 2 mansion-style houses.Allingham Court is situated in one-and-a-half acres of private and exquisitely landscaped gardens on the highly coveted western side of The Bishops Avenue. The development offers 10 three-bedroom residences and the 2 penthouses each providing between 2,500 and 6,000 sq ft of living space.
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| Property slowdown: even London feels pinch |
| 2008-04-08 18:40:00 |
The number of houses being sold in London is at its lowest level for more than a decade, research shows today.Sellers have been forced to shave hundreds of thousands of pounds off asking prices as a result.In one case, a house in Paultons Square, Chelsea, has had £250,000 cut off its original asking price of £3.5m in a bid to find a buyer.About 9,000 properties were sold in the capital in the first three months of this year. Last year, homes were being sold at the rate of 16,000 a month. According to property information website mouseprice.net, sales have been slower than in any period since 1995.
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| House price growth down again |
| 2008-04-02 03:15:00 |
The average cost of a home in England and Wales rose by just 5.3% during the 12 months to the end of February, the slowest rate of gain since July 2006, according to the Land Registry.At the same time monthly house price growth stalled, with the average value of a property remaining unchanged at £185,616.The overall figure masked more gloomy regional variations, with house prices falling in seven out of 10 regions during the month.
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| The super rich and super prime real estate in London |
| 2008-03-30 02:55:00 |
The super rich and super prime Estate">real estate in London seems to be immune to the effects of the credit crunch. This was clearly demonstrated by two property developers’ brothers Christian and Nicholas Candy who both just made 250 million pounds on property bought just 18 months ago. Candy and Candy sold two hotels located in fashionable Kensington London, both hotels overlook Kensington Gardens and were sold for a cool 320 million pounds. The Kensington Palace and Kensington Park Hotels site were sold to a Middle East consortium. The brothers had barely started work on the project and had planned to transform the hotel into super prime real estate. The hotels would have housed 97 apartments with price tags of 10 million pounds each.
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| A survey has found that London is becoming unpopular with investors due to rocketing house prices |
| 2008-03-26 06:19:00 |
Estate agent Knight Frank recently said house prices in the capital were rising at a rate of more than 30% annually during 2007.The Urban Land Institute (ULI), which concentrates on the use of urban land in order to enhance the total environment, has established that London has dropped to fifteenth place with regard to investment prospects and thirteenth place in terms of development prospects.In the past, London has been branded ‘a long-term favourite’. According to a spokesperson for the organisation, it is a measure of the sentiment of investors and developers which reflects that London, relative to other markets in Europe, has become exceptionally expensive.
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| Need for a real estate authors from London |
| 2008-03-23 19:25:00 |
Hi, its Tam Tree, hope you like the London Estate">real estate news blog.I need real estate authors from London to help me coverage the London area.Please send email if you like to participated in this effort. Thanks !tamtree@gmail.com
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| Bear buy fuels London real estate fears |
| 2008-03-20 06:08:00 |
LONDON (Reuters) - JP Morgan's (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) cut-price takeover of rival Bear Stearns (BSC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) has thrown open the U.S. bank's London office requirements at a time when tenant demand in Europe's premier financial centre appears vulnerable."It's the question we're all asking ourselves," said one leading London property broker, on condition of anonymity."Do they (JP Morgan) need a bigger headquarters or a smaller one?" he said.
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| Prime London property prices are weathering the market downturn |
| 2008-03-17 02:59:00 |
Savills said volumes of properties changing hands in the five million pound-plus market were down 23 percent on the year, while the value of deals has declined 11 percent, compared to a 106 percent surge in 2006.Douglas & Gordon, one of London's largest independent estate agents, has witnessed a 35 percent drop in buyers on last year, but from an abnormally high peak in early 2007.Despite a general consensus for a correction rather than a crash, some agents were more bearish than others.
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| Prime properties ignore national slump |
| 2008-03-13 14:00:00 |
The average UK house price fell for the fourth straight month in February, but properties in London's hotspots continue to soar.Research by Nationwide Building Society shows annual rate of house price growth sunk to its lowest level since November 2005, with prices falling 0.5% last month alone and 1% in the last three months.But contrasting research from estate agents Knight Frank found prime London properties - those valued at £2 million and above - have remained largely unblemished by the tumultuous market conditions, rising 0.6% in February and 2.8% since December.Chelsea was the top performing area, with an annual growth rate of 30%.
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| Brixton beats the property blues |
| 2008-03-11 11:45:00 |
Brixton, the West London industrial property developer, defied the general slump in commercial property as the value of its holdings rose 0.7 per cent to £2.45 billion.The small increase in Brixton's estate is set against a fall on average of 8.4 per cent for the value of Britain's industrial property holdings while the £450 billion UK commercial property market lost on average 7.7 per cent of its value last year, according to figures for the Investment Property Databank.“These results continue to differentiate Brixton's business from the general commercial property market,” Tim Wheeler, the firm’s chief executive, said. “We remain confident with our positioning at this stage in the economic cycle and the prospects for the business going forwar
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| Pedal power brings British real estate specialists to MIPIM |
| 2008-03-08 03:31:00 |
Over 28,000 property executives will travel to Cannes next week for the 19th edition of MIPIM, the World's Property Market. But for 140 British Estate">real estate specialists, the trip to the Côte d'Azur will be something of a five-day Odyssey. The 140 riders, drawn from nearly 100 UK property companies, have committed themselves to cycling 1,500 kilometres between London and Cannes. Their objective is to raise €663,000 for charities. Berkeley Group Cycle To Cannes (C2C) leaves London on March 6 and rides into Cannes on March 10, the eve of MIPIM. Started in 2006, the C2C 'peleton' has mushroomed from an initial 17 riders and was fully booked weeks before MIPIM 2008.
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| London Luxury Home Prices Rise at Slower Monthly Pace |
| 2008-03-05 14:54:00 |
March 4 (Bloomberg) -- Luxury-home prices in London, the world's most expensive city for prime real estate, rose in February at the slowest rate in four months as the prospect of smaller bonuses at financial firms deterred some buyers.The average price of houses and apartments costing more than 2 million pounds ($4 million) climbed 0.6 percent from January, Knight Frank LLC said today in a statement. The annual increase was about 24 percent, the smallest since September 2006.``Uncertainty continues to circle around the financial markets on which London's prime market relies,'' said Liam Bailey, head of residential research at Knight Frank.
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| UK real estate blues |
| 2008-03-02 16:03:00 |
You know sentiment in the UK property sector is bleak when Hammerson's news that its net asset value per share had dropped 5.5 per cent since June helped trigger a 6 per cent rise in the shares yesterday.There is plenty to be worried about. UK retail rents have historically correlated closely with economic growth (which should slow) while office rents have moved in parallel with lease lengths (which are falling). It could be years before rental rates start growing again. Prime London office rents face further pressure from planned new office space that could add 13 per cent to the existing stock by 2010. Commercial property values have been sliding since June, and many retail tenants face falling profits. Lenders, once willing to finance 80 to 90 per cent of a project, now cap loans at 70
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| Building Boom Gives Way to Fears of London Vacant Office Space |
| 2008-02-27 03:24:00 |
Developers started the building boom several years ago as banks, law firms and other companies expanded quickly. In many cases, property firms knocked down buildings from the 1930s, 1950s and 1980s to make way for towering structures of glass and steel. The City's mix of centuries-old architecture and cheap post-World War II construction didn't appeal to big banks, in particular, which wanted large, open trading floors and modern facades.But as the new buildings rise next to London's most historic sites, from St. Paul's Cathedral to the medieval Guildhall, some critics are balking. In a speech last month, Prince Charles, an outspoken architecture critic, called many of the new buildings "carbuncles" that will leave Londo...
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| Invista Real Estate FY pretax profit doubles |
| 2008-02-23 10:00:00 |
Invista Estate">Real Estate Investment Management Holdings PLC saw its full-year pretax profits double and said it looks forward to 2008 with 'cautious confidence'.Profit increased, boosted by higher performance fees, additional transaction and termination fees, higher average assets under management during the year and the impact of interest on cash balances, together with good cost control, the real estate fund manager said.
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| UK 08 home sales seen 19 pct below trend |
| 2008-02-20 16:49:00 |
LONDON (Reuters) - UK Sales">home sales are likely to remain about a quarter of a million below trend in 2008 after a 20 percent drop in the second half of 2007, Britain's biggest estate agent said on Tuesday.Grenville Turner, group chief executive of Countrywide PLC, told the Reuters Housing Summit that up to 1.1 million transactions were likely this year compared with a long-term average of 1.35 million.
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| London's 'billionaire's avenue' |
| 2008-02-17 16:26:00 |
Even as Britain's property market shows signs of struggling, one north London street is defying the gloom-mongers: houses on "billionaire's avenue" are still selling for record prices.Like an oasis of wealth in an increasingly parched real estate desert, The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead remains a booming property hotspot -- despite, for some, little in the way of elegance or discretion."Among the wealthiest in the world, The Bishops Avenue is better known than Buckingham Palace," Trevor Abrahamson of estate agents Glentree International told AFP with a hint of pride, having sold most of the 66 houses in the street.
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| The party's over for UK real estate ? |
| 2008-02-14 17:41:00 |
"We believe that ongoing concerns in the financing markets and current balance sheet positions mean that our Estate">real estate companies are likely to face headwinds, not storms, in terms of the availability of additional debt and borrowing costs," Goldman analyst Julian Livingston-Booth told clients in a research note.While headline debt ratios across the sector appear weak for this stage in the cycle, but there are enough mitigating factors to suggest limited risk of covenant breaches even if economies suffer a hard landing, he argued. Instead, the Goldman analyst was concerned that real estate companies lack the firepower to take advantage of any potential opportunities to buy at distressed prices, and instead will face
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| Realcomm Announces Inaugural Conference in UK for Real Estate Technology |
| 2008-02-12 03:04:00 |
Realcomm Conference Group, LLC, a global leader in providing education, information and networking opportunities to the Commercial Real Estate industry, launches its inaugural conference, Realcomm Europe 2008 on 18-19 February, 2008 at the Renaissance Chancery Court London. This two-day event will bring together the real estate technology industry and the European business community to discuss global best practices and the use of technology in the industry.
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| UK property sector consolidation expected |
| 2008-02-09 09:30:00 |
A banker with knowledge of the real estate industry said that, having fallen hard, many UK property companies now looked good value and were attracting a great deal of interest. “There are people running serious numbers on serious players,” he said, predicting strategic deals motivated by the correction in underlying physical real estate values. A second banker agreed that suitors were likely actively considering property deals because of the seemingly cheap stock.
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| London the world's most expensive city for prime real estate |
| 2008-02-05 17:47:00 |
London's most expensive new-built home was sold for 50 million pounds last month to Hourieh Peramaa, a 75-year-old real estate entrepreneur from Kazakhstan, the Sunday Times reported on Jan. 27.The house on Bishops Avenue in Hampstead, northwest London, has nine main bedrooms, 16 bathrooms and five reception rooms and was acquired from Turkish businessman Halis Toprak. Peramaa plans to spend another 30 million pounds extending and redecorating the property, the newspaper said.
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| Qatari Diar buys key London site |
| 2008-02-02 17:34:00 |
A consortium led by state-owned Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment has purchased the Chelsea Barracks in London for $1.91 billion, the consortium announced n Thursday. Britain's Defense Ministry closed the sale of Chelsea Barracks, former home of the Public Duties and State Ceremonial personnel and a prime development property in Westminster.Qatari Diar holds a majority in the consortium with its partner Christian Candy. Qatari Diar is owned by the Qatar Investment Authority.
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| Property Crunch Could Whack Brit Banks |
| 2008-01-31 05:10:00 |
The US subprime crisis is putting the brakes on Britain's commercial property boom, driving down real estate values and putting banks in jeopardy.Market fundamentals have indeed changed quite dramatically for commercial property. One indicator is the so-called "average prime yield," which has risen during the past year -- a sign of cooling demand and weakening returns on property investments. Data from realtor CB Richard Ellis show the underlying price of real estate assets in Britain has declined relative to rents, causing the yield to rise. It climbed 50 basis points, to 5.7 percent, in the fourth quarter of 2007 -- some 90 points higher than during the same period in 2006.
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| U.K. Housing Market Won't Pick Up This Year |
| 2008-01-28 01:04:00 |
Such gains have now come to an end. U.K. home prices fell for a third month in January, according to Rightmove Plc, Britain's most-used property Web site. The average asking price for U.K. homes dropped 0.8 percent to 230,428 pounds in January from the previous month, Rightmove said last week. In December, there was a 3.2 percent decline.Mortgage approvals dropped to the lowest in at least a decade in December as banks curbed their lending and higher interest rates deterred buyers.
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| Land Securities Sells Assets at Profit as Prices Fall |
| 2008-01-24 02:13:00 |
The sales in the three months ended Dec. 31 reaped 5.6 percent more than the commercial properties' estimated value at the start of the quarter, the London-based company said in a statement today. Land Securities, the world's fourth-largest real estate investment trust, has already leased 93 percent of the 241,700 square meters (2.6 million square feet) of development space due for completion in fiscal 2008.
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| Standard Life says UK property fund liquidity ok |
| 2008-01-21 03:00:00 |
LONDON, Jan 18 (Reuters) - UK insurer Standard Life (SL.L: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday it had not prevented retail investors from withdrawing cash from its flagship UK property fund, as liquidity in the fund remains sufficient."The situation is the same as in December. There's sufficient liquidity and there are no queues in place," to exit the firm's pooled pension property fund, said a Standard Life spokesman.
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| U.K. Property Stocks May Surge |
| 2008-01-19 00:42:00 |
U.K. real estate stocks rose in London trading after a Morgan Stanley analyst said the group may gain at least 20 percent in the first half as the Bank of England cuts interest rates to avert a recession.British Land Co., Europe's biggest real estate company by assets, Segro Plc, the U.K.'s largest owner of office parks, and Brixton Plc, the country's leading industrial landlord, all climbed more than 5 percent after Morgan Stanley raised its rating on the stocks.
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| Jaguar Capital buys key London property |
| 2008-01-15 01:18:00 |
Irish private wealth manager Jaguar Capital has bought the London headquarters of one of the largest firms of UK lawyers, SJ Berwin.While the sale price of the building was not revealed, the original guide price of the property - overlooking the Thames at Southwark Bridge - was £180m sterling.The property comprises some 231,000 square feet of office space over basement, ground and four upper floors.
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| British housing market facing tough years ahead |
| 2008-01-12 17:37:00 |
British house prices will stagnate this year and next and there is a two in three chance that prices fall on an annual basis at some point in 2008, a Reuters poll of property market analysts showed.The survey calls a definitive end to a decade-long housing boom, fuelled on cheap credit, that paused briefly three years ago but is now reeling from a slowing economy, debt loads, and the grip of a global credit crunch.Nearly all of the analysts polled said UK housing was too expensive compared with fundamentals, but only by a median 15 percent, the same as three months ago. Some rated British homes as very overvalued, with estimates as high as 40 percent.But in a group -- as they have been m
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| U.K. Real Estate Losses May Be Biggest in 25 Years |
| 2008-01-07 09:42:00 |
The U.K. market is falling apart,'' said Peter Hobbs, London-based head of research at RREEF Estate">Real Estate, a Deutsche Bank AG unit that manages about $100 billion. ``There's a risk that this cyclical downturn turns into something worse.''Britain's 700 billion-pound commercial property market will perform worse in 2008 than the rest of Europe, the U.S. and Asia, Hobbs said. The slide is accelerating as banks tighten lending standards across the globe after losses of more than $90 billion from U.S. mortgage investments.
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| Gulf investors weigh up the benefits of UK downturn |
| 2008-01-01 01:25:00 |
Private and leveraged investors, banks and funds, including Gulf-based sovereign wealth funds, dominate Middle East investment in the UK property sector. Islamic financial institutions have also been active in the UK commercial real estate market through transactions or real estate investment funds such as those launched by Noriba Bank; Kuwait Finance House; Gulf Finance House; Qatar Islamic Bank; Arcapita Bank; ABC International Bank and others.
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| Russian bankers turn to building real estate in London |
| 2007-12-28 14:15:00 |
The amount of investments in the project will approximately make up 130 million pounds ($260 million). This is quite enough to construct a 200 apartment residential complex with the area of 50 to 100 thousand square meters. Hammersmith is known as a district of business-class residences. The most popular apartments in Hammersmith are sold at 340 thousand pounds, while the average price on a one–bedroom apartment is 450 thousand pounds.
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| London's high home prices take mortgage crisis hit |
| 2007-12-22 13:52:00 |
LONDON — Once upon a time, a former storage room the size of a walk-in closet went on the market in London's exclusive Knightsbridge neighborhood for $335,000. With only 77 square feet and no electricity, the dilapidated "home" drew multiple offers.Those were the heady days of a year ago, when property sellers and their agents could pretty much name their price.But now, home prices are slumping and fears of a recession in Britain next year are rising.
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| Old regions offer best real estate returns |
| 2007-12-15 00:48:00 |
Property investors looking for the next exciting far-flung part of the world should perhaps search instead in more traditional markets.Some professional investors see value in Britain, following the torrid past few months.“The best value is in the UK at the moment,” says Rob Randall, head of property at Matrix Group, investment manager. “Of course, emerging markets have been doing well, but for real value you can’t argue with UK Estate">real estate investment trusts trading at 40 per cent discounts to net asset value.”
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