International Property Headlines

Unaffordable house prices in New Zealand leading to falling homeownership levels
● 2 reports reveal high density regions in New Zeland face severe housing shortage
● Households making $70,000 a year are being locked out of home ownership will lead to falling ownership and big increase in lifetime young family and the elderly renters increasing rental property demand
● Auckland city needs 55,000 new houses and flats over next decade. New-house building stifled by high development costs and council consent delays.
● Government plan for home affordability bill to force developers to build proportion of low-cost homes in new estates to ease Auckland’s housing shortage based on success of Britain’s shared-equity affordable housing-schemes.
● Worries that low cost homes might cheapen new estates and subsidised by buyers of higher-priced property. More work should be done to help people into existing homes with quality rental property standards and tighten eviction laws.
● Auckland city’s property market based on greed, provision of alternative investment vehicles needed for mom and pop investors pushing up prices.
● Call to look at spending habits on new cars, designer coffee and overseas trips in favour of saving to buy a home.

Malaysia lures the second-home set
● Low interest rates, less government red tape, scrapped capital gains tax to entice wealthy foreigners.
● ‘Malaysia My Second Home Program’ to attract retirees now without prior approval by foreign buyer panel and can now buy multiple properties. Application process still ‘painful’.
● Malaysia’s property index up almost 1/3 in 2007
● Property much cheaper than Singapore or Hong Kong with 6.75% interest rate lowest in South East Asia.
● $100 billion directly invested in Asian real estate in 2006. Foreign investors from the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, China, Korea and Singapore.
● Market for high end properties with big Malaysian real estate developers selling larger proportion of homes to foreigners.
● Malaysia has growing social problems as economic growth widens gap between the haves and have-nots.
● Motorbike bag-snatching thieves and rising spate of burglaries and carjackings means Malaysia is now considered not as safe as it once was.

Cape Verde Banco Comercial profits rise 85 percent in 2006
● Profits of Cape Verde’s Banco Comercial do Atlantico rise 85 percent in 2006
● 85% profits rise in 2006 to 3.35 million euros from negative 2005 trend
● BCA annual report attributes to growth in loans
● 2006 BCA granted 11.8 million euros of private property loans, 35% up on 2005