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Hong Kong is learning from its all-time rival Singapore as it seeks to tame the city’s land prices.

In addition to the tender amount of the successful bidder in land sales, the Hong Kong government will now publish the amounts of all failing tender submissions, announced Secretary for Development Michael Wong in a media briefing for land sale programme in the new year.

Under the city’s previous land tender system, only the winning bid is revealed while the amounts of other bids submitted were not disclosed. Starting from April, after all transaction procedures for the successful bid are completed, the government will publish the amounts of the other tender submissions, though without identifying who made which offers.

“In view of the uniqueness of the property market, we think it may be a good time to increase the transparency of the market.”

Michael Wong, Secretary for Development,

The rule change …

Of the many infrastructure projects gaining traction in Bangkok, the Bang Sue Grand Central Station will probably be the most impactful.

Bang Sue Central Station (Thai: ???????????????? Sa-thanee Klang Bang Sue) or Bang Sue Grand Station is to be the new railway hub of Thailand, located in Chatuchak, Bangkok. It is to replace the currently in use Bangkok Railway Station at Hua Lamphong as the terminus for all long-distance rail services from Bangkok.

The station has been be submitted for Cabinet approval in 2017 and construction begun in 2018.The station will replace the existing Bang Sue Junction Railway Stationand incorporate Bang Sue MRT Station.

It will be the largest railway station in Southeast Asia with 171,000 m2 of total area. The 218-rai (35 hectares) area around the station will be developed as a business and commercial hub, in three zones.

With 26 platforms, the Bang Sue Grand Station is poised to be the la…

Vietnam’s real estate sector has witnessed significant participation from Japanese investors through cooperation with Vietnamese businesses recently, promising to bring benefits to the real estate market.

According to real estate company Savills Vietnam, over the past years, Asian investors, including Japanese ones, were only involved in commercial real estate like commercial centres, serviced apartments or office buildings.

However, at present, these investors are increasing their activity in the residential segment due to the country’s young population and an increasing middle class, presenting an extremely attractive opportunity.

Presence of big Japanese investors

Shinichi Sakaki, deputy general director of the City Bureau, at Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, said the Japanese Government now has policies to support real estate developers promoting investment abroad.

In addition, Japan has the experience of…

Bangkok’s real estate market has witnessed tremendous growth over the last five years. Since 2013, more than 300,000 new condo units have been launched, 1.3 million square metres of new retail space has opened and nearly 800,000 sqm of new office space has completed, not to mention healthy growth in the hospitality and logistics sectors.

In 2018, the underlying drivers of the recent growth cycle are changing and creating new challenges for the market’s leading players. Property consultancy JLL reveals some of the trends that are shaping the Bangkok real estate market this year.

Andrew Gulbrandson, Head of Research at JLL, says “Rapidly rising land costs continue to represent a significant challenge for the market today. The recent annual increases around the market of 10-15% per year are pushing developers in new directions.”

With only a handful of except…

Thai Airbnb hosts have served more than 1.2 million guest arrivals over the past 12 months and earned 4 billion baht.

 

Airbnb’s head of public policy for Southeast Asia, said the Thai host community earned a combined US$119 million (4 billion baht) in supplemental income from February 2017 to February 2018. Ms Goh said the 1.2 million guests represent 66% year-on-year growth in arrivals.

She attributed the growth to the increasing acceptance of the hospitality platform among Thais as an opportunity to earn extra income and welcome guests from around the world.

“There are over 61,400 listings in Thailand on Airbnb, and the median host income averages $2,100 or 67,000 baht annually,” Ms Goh said.

Bangkok and Phuket contributed more than half of host earnings and guest arrivals over the past 12 months. Airbnb hosts in Bangkok earned 1.1 billion baht by sharing their homes with 485,000 guests.

In Phuket, the stro…

Already a significant player in the real estate space, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are set to further increase their allocation to real estate.

Preferred sectors include core office and retail assets as well as open-ended funds and listed REITs (real estate investment trusts) with allocations to steadily increase over the foreseeable future.

According to PwC, sovereign investors held US$11.3 trillion in 2015, a figure that’s predicted to grow to US$15.3 trillion by 2020. In 2015, 59 percent of sovereign wealth funds invested in real estate. By 2017, this share has reached 63 percent.

SWF’s allocations to alternatives – which includes real estate and infrastructure – have increased significantly across most portfolios, according to Nick Wilson, from JLL’s Asia Pacific Capital Markets Research team, noting that drivers include low correlation to traditional asset classes, such as equities and fixed income, and the potential for high risk-adjusted return…

A drone the size of one’s palm buzzes 50 metres up a skyscraper in downtown Singapore. Tracing the contours of the building, the machine scans for cracks and records the temperature of the building’s façade as it makes its ascent.

Sitting in a room 5 kilometres away, a man sees a live feed from the drone’s camera on his desktop screen. He analyses the data and combines it with information collected from hundreds of other buildings.

Welcome to proptech 3.0 – the convergence of property and technology – where autonomous drones, big data and artificial intelligence (AI) come together to transform the property sector.

I’ve been in real estate my entire career – and it is clear to me that much is changing, and changing fast. For instance, instead of sending property managers out to buildings to manually inspect them and log the findings, the job can now be done by smart robots capable of carrying out each task with lightning precision.

…

As we approach the end of 2017, here’s a look back at the most significant real estate trends that have shaped the real estate landscape – and are likely to flow through to 2018.

1. Proptech

A convergence of property and technology: proptech has changed the way we use real estate. From data analytics to artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, virtual reality and blockchain; proptech’s influence has been so pervasive that it’s virtually what we breathe here in JLL.

As part of JLL’s Power Up: Proptech drive, we held our first hackathon in Singapore in October where the firm selected innovators from across Asia Pacific to build new apps and technologies. Following that, we streamed our first learning session: “Will I have a job in five years?” which saw thousands of colleagues logging in and watching.

JLL kickstarted its proptech journey with the sponsorship of Southeast Asia’s first proptech hackathon, Hood Disrupt, in August. We sponsored and sp…

Singaporean sovereign wealth fund, is acquiring a 43 percent stake in Shinjuku MAYNDS Tower, a 97,978 square metre Grade-A office property in Tokyo for 62.5 billion yen ($558 million), according to a press release from the fund yesterday.

The Shinjuku SWF deal came just one day after a real estate affiliate of Prudential Financial announced the acquisition of J Tower in Tokyo’s suburban neighborhood, as the latest in an $808 million dollar series of Japanese acquisitions by the company over the past 14 months.

The deals come during the same week that the Japanese government upgraded its outlook for economic growth in the world’s third-largest economy.

GIC, which manages over $100 billion in assets, in a statement called the Shinjuku MAYNDS Tower deal a unique opportunity for the fund to acquire a sizeable and stable income-producing asset

GIC Buys into Shinjuku

Lee Kok Sun of GIC

The Singapor…