Real Estate Blog where we talk about everything related to the housing market
21 December, 2011 No Comments
Category: Uncategorized
16 September, 2011 No Comments
From the association between Spanish Dataga and Hainan China Railway Construction Investment surges the development of this project.
Spanish real estate developer Dataga will build, according to their data, the largest residential, tourist, and leisure project of the Asian continent. The idea is to build four large residential complexes in the areas of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hainan. The project, referred to as Europe Royale, seeks to recreate the architecture and landscapes of five European countries (Spain, Italy, France, England and Germany).
Believe it or not, this project is to actually build four new cities that will include all necessary services of a city; schools, hospitals, leisure space, tourism, cultural, and sports centers. In a future post I will write about the agreement (7.1.11) closed with RFEF (Spanish soccer federation) to manage the football section of the new City of sports of Europe Royale in Beijing. The first project currently underway is the one to be held in Hebeli, near Beijing.
The developer, in a joint venture with local partners, has agreed to develop the project with Chinese authorities, public and private organisms, and Asian funds and banks. Hainan China Railway Construction Investment, a partially state-owned enterprise, will collaborate in the development of the first project, and Dataga has created a network of Chinese and international offices and companies. For the Beijing project, the initial investment is estimated to be € 10,000 million, of which € 1,900 million will be allocated in the first phase. (Expansion 3.2.11).
The entire project is scheduled to be built in 10 years, working in periods of 24 months with the first property deliveries in 2012. The villas, ranging from 400 to 1,200 square meters, will have an approximate value of 6,000 € / m2, and are targeted to the high-end segment of the Chinese society, without forgetting other potential markets such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and Japan. In addition to the residential area, there will be a financial district, with 25 office buildings, international universities and sport areas.
This major project is one of the pioneers with which the Spanish real estate sector has expanded in the Chinese market. This was possible due to the Chinese law of urbanization that qualified land as state ownership (concession), which did not appeal foreign investors to develop real estate projects in China.
For more information please check:
www.europeroyale.com
8 September, 2011 No Comments
A real estate fiction that holds on to the crisis.
This is a version of the popular board game Monopoly created by the jeweler Sidney Mobell in 1988, ordered by toymaker Hasbro, the company that commercializes the game, and that carries a value of $2 million. This version was not marketed, instead was donated to the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, who then lent it to the New York’s Museum of Finance located on Wall Street for a few months, and became the museum’s newest attraction.
No need to explain the dynamics of this game, which we all know and have enjoyed since its inception
The following pieces of the game are made with gold; the board, the street cards, its chips and the dices. The hotels are decorated with sapphires and the houses with rubies on top of the chimneys. The dots on the dices are diamonds, and the famous streets, which could vary depending on which country or city the game was bought, are decorated with diamonds as well as the path from the prison to the parking lot.
There have been many versions of this game, noting the chocolate one made by Neiman Marcus.
This game is intended to be a representation of the capitalist world we live in and the attractions of wealth accumulation, promoting competition, and the search for the best positions within the real estate market in different locations, and therefore of our society.
The Associated Press video gives a more detailed picture of the Monopoly as a piece of jewelry .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZTICTJpRnE&feature=player_embedded
A peculiar version of the famous Forbes list ranking billionaires around the world, is the “Fiction Forbes List” which has also had some variations in the last few years; Mr. Monopoly, who had amassed great wealth through real estate speculation and was at the top of the list early in the decade, has disappeared after losing his fortune, swept away by the crisis that hit real estate (subprime mortgages) in the United States. Instead, Uncle Scrooge (Donald Duck), invested his fortune in gold (a safe haven during the financial-real estate crisis) that increased his wealth even more scaling up to the top 5 in the Forbes-fiction list.
5 September, 2011 No Comments
Eco architecture, or a way of architecture that seeks to create a lower environmental impact, would be interlinked with organic, sustainable, bioclimatic, eco-design architecture, etc…
This architecture is based on taking advantage from natural resources, and trying to minimize the impact of buildings on the environment and its inhabitants.
Eco architects seek to reduce energy consumption for heating, cooling, and lighting the building…. covering the demand of these needs with renewable energy sources. Energy efficiency challenges architecture to create useful techniques that reduce the building’s energy consumption needs, fueling energy savings, either by seeking to capture solar energy or by generating their own.
Environmentally sustainable constructions include economic, social and environmental aspects.
These buildings are built in locations where the environmental impact is minor, focusing on issues related to energy consumption, water, and chemicals used in the construction.
The materials and energy used in these constructions should be renewable. They use green electricity: photovoltaic energy (solar panels), geothermal (collected from the ground, which is formed by the waste generated by the property itself and that can be used to generate biogas energy to satisfy the needs of the building).
Water: Conservation and integration of rainwater, thus using recycled water to irrigate the garden, etc..
Bioclimatic architecture takes into account the environmental conditions of the area in which the building will be located, thus achieving an interior welfare with little need for a/c or heating systems. In order to do this, the architect takes advantage of the natural sources of light, heat and cold, using techniques such as orientation, insulation of walls, to partially bury the house or placing vegetation on the roof. These techniques are used depending on the type of weather that should be counteracted (very warm or very cold). In fact, bioclimatic architecture has been present in the traditional architecture of countries such as Iceland and other Nordic countries, where you can find houses that have vegetation on their roofs during the long, cold winter periods in order to temper the house. Green roofs improve insulation by reducing the heat and cold that gets onto the roofs, and filter pollution and absorb carbon dioxide from the air.
Zen architects have several proposals for green homes.
….. to celebrate last Christmas and the incoming year 2011, the main Spanish and European cities were illuminated with “design”.
For several months starting december 4 2010, the Luce Della Exposizione Internazionale di Milano was open to the public. This exhibition aimed to shine the city with light installations from famous designer such as Matteo Thun & Partners or Fabio Novembre, along with projects of young professionals and students from schools of design, who presented their projects at the pre-Led Award Contest, sponsored by the Comune di Milano, Corriere della Sera, H & M, Nespresso, Luce & Design, Ubi Banca, a2a, Audi, Guzzini, Swarovsky, Santa & Cole ….. among others.
The projects were located in the streets (Via Montenapoleone), plazas, fountains, parks, monuments, palaces, which, added to the project of interior lighting that highlights Duomo’s windows that was put together by the studio of Castagna & Pavelli with Philips, formed the circuit of the 2nd LED display 2010.
LEDs, with all its variations (white, colored, OLEDs) provide energy, efficiency, miniaturization, control, automation and other possibilities to illuminate the future in ways that one cannot even imagine.
These pictures are just a short compilation of images from this exhibition with a design created by different color LEDs, with light being THE essence of decoration in different areas of Milan.
Erco is one of the companies that promotes LED lighting, and is in continuous research and development of this lighting system to come up with innovative decorations, with international presence (“Light + Building 2010″ in Frankfurt), and in our country.
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8 August, 2011 No Comments
If you are planning to buy a property it is recommended that you attend real estate shows.
Barcelona hosted last autumn the 13th edition of BCN MEETING POINT, and MADRID the 3rd call of the RESIDENTIAL OUTLET. These fairs were held on different dates and its targets are quite differentiated by their search criteria.
BCN MEETING POINT: Professional Real Estate annual event. This fall will be held from October 19th to the 23th, offering all kind of real estate product:
- Housing; from luxury homes to official protection homes (VPO), but it is basically focused on first hand properties, and some second hand as well.
-Warehouses, shopping centers and industrial sites.
-Specialized housing, lofts, duplexes, penthouses, detached house
-Others: parking, land, hotels, offices, resorts combined of golf + homes….
It covers products at a national and international level, allowing a foreign country to present itself as a country and as a possible destination for international property purchase. The show also presents real estate developments in emerging countries.
RESIDENTIAL OUTLET: Organized by IFEMA Madrid from September 24th to the 26th
DISCOUNTED HOUSE SHOW:
It is basically aimed at offering first and second hand housing in Spain at competitive prices. The show is also known as “affordable housing show” because it provides residential product at discounts of up to 40%.
It covers both the first and second home market from one to four bedrooms, and assets such as penthouses, apartments, studios, shops, offices or garages.
The Spanish areas that had a wider range of product offerings during the 2009 edition were the city of Madrid, PAU in Vallecas and Sanchinarro. Next in line the south of Spain, Andalusia, with several promotions around the coast, and Valencia. Finally at a smaller scale: Canarias, Castilla y León, Valencia, Balearic Islands and Cantabria.
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27 July, 2011 No Comments
Despite the efforts, no changes will be made to Diagonal Avenue, since the project of building a pedestrian zone and convert it into a commercial area was postponed after Barcelona’s citizens voted against it.
This may be one of the factors that have made Rambla Catalunya (another street downtown Barcelona) to have a rotation again of over a month to cover an available store space. The area with the highest demand is along the middle of the Rambla where several Zaras and the Pink Boulevard are located.
In comparison to Paseo de Gracia, the public who shops in Rambla Catalunya is more local, where in the first, is highly international mainly because there are several must-see buildings for tourists in Barcelona, and the supply for dining is growing fast. In Rambla Catalunya there are still traditional businesses (Quilez, La Selecta or Mauri), which in comparison with newer fashion brands, may make it look a calmer environment. 
However, we should not forget that another reason for the increase in demand from local brands in Rambla Catalunya, could be due to the lower price asked to rent a store caused by the current crisis, which in the past, made it impossible for these brands to access the street. A third reason, not less important, could be that the payments for the transfer of store space have gradually disappeared.
Some store spaces that recently were held by banks or restaurants have been replaced by new retail brands. The people involved in the sector (expansion 7.10) state that there are no longer opportunities and that the demand of brands for these spaces already exceeds the available supply of stores.
In 2010 brands such as Custo Growing, Etxart & Panno, Imaginarium, Tuc-tuc, Pretty Ballerinas, Aninoto or GC Watches have entered the Rambla.
15 July, 2010 No Comments
We will see that when houses are able to generate their own renewable or clean energy, do not spend more than necessary and reaching a responsible consumption reaches where each consumer becomes its own electricity generator.
Differentiating energies:
What is the Solar Decathlon?
An International Architecture & Engineering Competition sponsored by U.S. Energy Department, along with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, where the participating universities should build a house supplied entirely by solar energy.
It is noteworthy that the sun is at the basis of all renewable energies, the heat causes it to produce pressure differences that give rise to winds and organizes water cycles, leading to evaporation and therefore the rains, while promoting the plants perform photosynthesis.
The 17 houses participating in “solar village” has produced nearly three times the energy they have consumed. The excess energy has been poured into the network and used by residents of the area where the houses have been built.
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28 June, 2010 No Comments
Once the general description of what legally constitutes a reverse mortgage, I would like to get deeper on this subject from the practice.
In fact, we are trying to see the possibility that home ownership to be a source of income for retirement, because the properties are usually one of the main assets for people during their retirement age.
This type of mortgage assures the owner will receive a monthly amount in exchange for his home, keeping it as a place of residence to his death.
Normally, is possible to earn a starting spot sum, to pay the expenses resulting from the completion of the contract and the reforms that have to do, etc. Since that time, periodic amounts are charged; depending on the financial entity, they can reach 90% of the initial appraisal.
The operation can be canceled at any time, but typically would receive the income until the death of the holder, when the heirs will receive the property and their loads. This leads, today, that some reverse mortgages are being made on second homes, as a way to dispose of apartments that are not selling in the market.
On the other hand, the initial idea of a reverse mortgage, which originated about the year 2005, was to have a high valuation of the property and thus receive a higher monthly income. But now, valuations are lower, that’s why the income that can be achieved with the same property are much lower than those obtained earlier, due to a fall of the housing market.
There is another element that can create uncertainty for the bank to make reverse mortgage: life expectancy is now set to reach the 80 years in many cases. The bank wants to make sure income, which adds costs to the operation to avoid reaching what the financial market is called “negative equity”, which means that the debt exceeds the property value.
To eliminate the obstacles that appear to have the reverse mortgage at the moment, there is the idea that in Spain, “who has an apartment has a treasure”. Therefore, older people think well before taking a reverse mortgage to offset income his small pension. Furthermore, the sons are not yet aware that this house belongs to their parents, and so they are not obliged to let them it in heritance.
Tags: heritance, housing market, owner, reverse mortgage, second homes
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