The incentives announced with the launch of the Forest City Special Financial Zone (SFZ) may attract financial businesses and residents that could increase around 20 per cent in home sales during the first year of its launch.

Industry experts opined that a successful model of the SFZ can be a prototype of an ideal financial zone that can be adopted in other parts of the country.

Juwai IQI co-founder and group chief executive officer (CEO) Kashif Ansari said if the incentive packages succeed, Forest City could see higher demand for housing and commercial space and an increase in both residents and property investors.

“In the first year, these incentives might attract a couple of dozen new financial businesses, a few thousand residents, a 20 per cent increase in home sales.

Within five years, you could see hundreds of new businesses, 10,000 or 20,000 new residents, home prices back up higher than the original sales prices, and even plans for new construction being laid,” he told Business Times.

Proactive property investors will be the first movers of Forest City as they seek to purchase property before the prices rise, and with the expectation that they will.

“Other investors will wait and see before they purchase, to make sure that the new incentives in fact herald a rebound in the local property market,” he said.

Source: NST Online

ASCOTT, the wholly owned lodging business unit of CapitaLand Investment : 9CI +0.34% (CLI), expects to open 28 properties across South-east Asia in 2024.

The group’s expansion comes amid robust growth prospects in the region, where the hotels market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 5.8 per cent to achieve US$16.4 billion in revenue by 2029, said Ascott on Monday (Sep 23).

It also expects tourist arrivals to achieve pre-pandemic levels by the end of this year.

Wong Kar Ling, chief strategy officer and managing director of South-east Asia for Ascott, said: “Contributing over 30 per cent of our total revenue, this region remains central to Ascott’s global expansion strategy.

She also noted that the group is “on track” to open the 28 properties in the region this year, with 12 already completed.

Additionally, Ascott also announced 28 new signings year-to-date in the region. The new signings will add more than 3,400 units across its various brands, including lyf, Citadines and Oakwood.

Following the new signings, Ascott’s portfolio in the region will amount to more than 360 assets, both operational and in the pipeline. They will also account for more than half of the group’s year-to-date global signings.

Seven of the newly signed properties are part of the Oakwood brand, which will open in Cambodia and expand across several Indonesian cities and Singapore.

Source: Business Times

Brazilian artist Lalalli Senna has designed the concept for Senna Tower, a 500-metre-tall supertall skyscraper in Brazil set to be the nation’s tallest and “tallest residential tower in the world”, according to its developer.

The Senna Tower is planned for Balneário Camboriú, a city in Brazil’s Santa Catarina state that is known for its skyscraper-lined coastal skyline.

Renderings show a slim, glass-clad tower. At its base, a section of the facade slips forward to create a series of terraces that are covered in pools and landscaping.

A race track will encircle the podium, which will be part of an “immersive space” dedicated to Brazilian racing driver Ayrton Senna, who died at the age of 34 as a result of a driving accident.

The project is a joint venture between developer, construction and engineering firm FG Empreendimentos and the Senna Brand, the lifestyle brand of the late driver.

It was designed by Ayrton Senna’s niece and artist Lalalli Senna to reflect his “heroic journey”, with the horizontal axis representative of the “material” and the vertical, “the celestial and ideal.”

Bands of lights will run up the facade and around the base. At the top of the tower, the lights surrounding the crown are shown to project upwards.

“The tower’s architectural form was designed to symbolise this heroic journey of overcoming our ideals and the manifestation of our profound potential,” said Lalalli Senna.

“The hero is composed of flesh and bone and thus begins from the material axis. However, they seek qualities that belong to the realm of ideals, such as strength, skill, honour, and truth. The hero embarks on a journey towards what belongs to the celestial domain, striving to reflect these non-material aspects.”

“Eventually, the hero sheds their mortal shell and becomes pure light to complete their journey, symbolised in the crowning of Senna Tower.”

At 500 metres tall, Senna Tower will contain 228 residential units, including 18 “mansions”, 204 apartments, four duplex penthouses, and two “two mega triplex penthouses” spanning 903 square metres.

Amenities will be distributed over six floors throughout the building, and a 6,000 square metre rooftop will also contain “leisure space”.

Source: Dezeen

Home prices in India are set to rise steadily over the next few years, driven by demand for luxury properties from cash-rich individuals, according to a Reuters poll of housing experts who forecast rent increases will outpace consumer inflation.

While economic growth in Asia’s third-largest economy is likely to outpace its major peers, policy experts warn the benefits are increasingly being funnelled to a select few, leaving millions of job-seekers, especially young people, out of the growth
story.

With a supply of affordable homes dwindling and those with cash cornering the property market, many aspiring first-time buyers are being forced to keep renting.

After growing 4.3% last year, national home prices in India were expected to rise 7.75% this year, an upgrade from the 6.0% predicted in May, according to the median forecast from the Aug. 20-Sept. 2 survey of 16 property market experts.
Home prices are then expected to increase 6.0%-6.25% in the next two years. Average home prices in India broadly refer to housing in major cities.

Housing demand is heavily tilted towards the luxury housing segment. This maintains a seemingly unstoppable growth curve while affordable housing continues to bleed,” said Anuj Puri, chairman at ANAROCK Property Consultants.

“Tellingly, there was no new affordable supply. It is little wonder that developers are aligning supply with the prevailing demand and are launching more luxury housing projects now.”

Source: Reuters