Dubai Unveils City to be Home to 9.5 Million People
Dubai urban planners have completed a blueprint for the city to house 9.5 million people – more than four times its current population.
Dubai Municipality has completed a citywide urban design plan which sets out future density and population levels across the Emirate, according to the organisation’s assistant director general Abdullah Rafia.
He told Dubai Chamber’s CEO conference earlier this week that countries across the world need to contend with rapid population growth, especially in cities, as 70% growth in the world’s urban population is expected by 2030.
” Fortunately, here in Dubai, all of the population is urban, ” he said. ” Our urban design needs to be sustainable – to have a design that limits sprawl but considers the impact [of population growth] “.
” We have already designed the urban design for the whole of Dubai. The urban area of Dubai will consist of one-third of the area of the emirate of Dubai and its maximum capacity will hold over 9.5 million people, ” he said.
He added that there is no time frame for its blueprint for the city to be reached, but said that with the urban design plan in place, ” our future can be properly implemented “.
Mr Rafia also said that the municipality is moving ahead with its plans for Desert Rose – a new, sustainable city planned to be built in Dubai that will house up to 160,000 people.
” This is at the early stage, ” he said. ” We’ve contracted the infrastructure designers, so they are engaged. We already have the concept design finished, so a lot of things are finished. It is something that can be built real fast, ” he said.
Speaking about the high degree of sustainability it plans to incorporate into the design, he said: ” Our designers told me we are very close to [achieving] zero emissions “.
Also speaking at the conference, Saeed Al Abbar, chairman of the Emirates Green Building Council, explained that sustainability standards were improving to such an extent that the most sustainable homes can now generate more energy than they consume.
” We’re going to move away from this ‘less damage’ approach to buildings with an actual positive benefit. We’re also going to see a greater focus on retrofits of existing buildings, ” he said.
” This is something that has really picked up in the past four or five years in Dubai. There’s 120,0000 buildings in Dubai. If we only focus on new builds, we miss 90% of the puzzle “.
There is a wealth of opportunity in Dubai for property investors and the massive injection of investment capital being pumped into the real estate sector provides plenty of growth potential and is set to become increasingly attractive to savvy buyers in the Emirate.
Article by +Roxanne James on behalf of Propertyshowrooms.com
Real Estate Crowdfunding Booming in Asia
In Asia, real estate crowdfunding is in its infancy and is mostly about presales and debts instead of equity investment, with regulators yet to pin down the details on how they should govern the fledging industry.
Mainland China had 128 crowdfunding platforms online as of the end of 2014, including 32 for equity, according to a report by 01caijing , which provides broader online financial services, including data and research.
Many developers have been actively using these crowdfunding platforms to reach out to potential home buyers at a much earlier stage than before, as part of their efforts to reduce inventories. Apart from that, crowdfunding is also being used to cut construction, marketing and sales costs while speeding up cash collection, said Shi Kancheng, chairman of Zhong An Real Estate .
Zhong An, like other online realtors, embraced the internet by testing crowdfunding in July when it put for sale online some units in a new project in Hangzhou. ” That enables us to find specified demand first and then make products, ” Kancheng told the South China Morning Post.
Crowdfunding, which pools funds from a large number of investors via the internet, was acknowledged by Premier Li Keqiang last year and legalised in December. Then 10 different ministries issued a joint set of guidelines in July to define it as a public small equity investment via the internet to fund start-up firms. In August, the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued a notice to check crowdfunding activities in the country.
Despite regulatory uncertainties, many mainland developers including Dalian Wanda Group and Country Garden have been raising funds and selling homes through crowdfunding websites such as Zhongchou.com and e-commerce platform Taobao’s crowdfunding channel.
In Singapore, where it is not clear whether such investment activities should come under the oversight of the city state’s monetary authority, real estate crowdfunding operator CoAssets has been operating for more than two years and got listed in Australia’s junior stock market in July as it expands across the region.
” We have observed that developers, after using our site to crowdfund, found it very effective to reach out to the crowd to also sell some of their products, ” CoAssets co-founder Getty Goh told a forum in Macau.
Most of the website’s recent listings are tagged as ” presales ” rather than ” crowdfunding “. For example, a developer called Jalin Realty International is marketing a residential project in Melbourne. Apart from introduction of the project and contact information, the website shows minimum investment is A$340,000 and that 28 investors were interested as of last Friday.
The listing on the National Stock Exchange of Australia is a step to bring itself to a larger regional audience and getting prepared for an eventual initial public offering in one or two more years.
Goh described CoAssets as a website for developers to raise bridge loan or short-term working capital at a maximum amount of S$5 million per deal. ” The hardest sum to raise is between the S$500,000 and S$2 million mark, because it is too big for friends and families to chip in, but too small to get banks interested in, ” he said.
CoAssets has raised S$40 million through over 30 successful deals, in the form of debts. But Goh is moving into equity investment in Malaysia, where the local securities regulator approved six equity crowdfunding operators in June, ahead of many other Asian nations.
The crowdfunding platform is also looking at opportunities in Indonesia and China. The current project listings on its website come from all over the world, including London and Tokyo as well as cities in China and Cambodia. ” There is a lot of demand for this kind of services here in Asia, ” Goh said, when pointing out that the number of registered investor on CoAssets’ website has soared above 26,000.
Article by +Roxanne James on behalf of Propertyshowrooms.com
Turkey Launches Golden Visa Residency Scheme
Turkish Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci says the country is set to follow in the footsteps of Spain, Portugal and Cyprus and launch its own Golden Visa scheme to grant citizenship to those foreigners who invest from €500,000-€1m in property.
Leading Istanbul agent, Universal21 , says the move could revolutionise the Turkish property market. Director Adil Yaman, says, ” Turkey, and the country’s biggest city of Istanbul, is widely lauded as a cultural melting pot and this is certainly – increasingly – the case in the property market. In recent years growing numbers of external buyers have looked to purchase property in this wonderful country, and the exciting new announcement by the Minister looks set to escalate this to impressive levels in 2016 “.
” Benefitting individuals looking to purchase in a growing market, providing welcome advantages alongside their property purchase, as well as the economic benefits for Turkey as a whole, this is a positive move from the government for a country open to, and welcoming of, foreign investment “.
The number of overseas buyers in Turkey rose 19% year-on–year from January to September 2015 and by 26.1% in Istanbul, according to data from the statistics office, Turkstat .
With the success of the Portuguese Golden Visa scheme, which has brought in €1.47billion of investment since its launch in 2012, €1.33billion of which was from property purchases, it is easy to see why this would be a welcome move for Turkey, says Universal21.
Compounding the notion that the nation is focused on expanding the already flourishing property market, the government says it wants to see overall foreign investment reach $10billion.
The knock-on effect of the proposed scheme to the sector and those who operate in it, as well as to the country’s coffers as a whole, is clear is welcomed by the agency.
September saw Turkey’s largest city of Istanbul overtake Antalya as the top Turkish location for house sales to foreigners, registering a growth of 26.1% from January to September 2015, compared to 2014 figures.
Universal21 are providing new projects in response to this growing demand in the city for high quality, affordable housing. Having just launched their new project, 7th Avenue, the agent is already seeing impressive interest levels. Situated in the middle class neighbourhood of Old Beylikdüzü, in close proximity to local amenities and restaurants, a 20 minute drive from Ataturk international airport, a short drive from the beach and a 10 minute walk from the area’s major shopping centre, Marmara Park, 7th Avenue is perfectly located.
Hotel investments have also increased considerably in 2015 with the Turkish government pouring investment into its hospitality sector to meet swelling visitor numbers, particularly in Istanbul. There has also been a rise in investment from the Middle East this year with buyers focusing on buy to let opportunities in Istanbul’s up and coming suburbs.
Despite geo-political tensions, Turkey’s real estate market has improved significantly this year, supported by rising tourism and increased affluence. The introduction of the golden visa scheme will further incentivise buyers from non-EU countries seeking the advantages of European residency.
Article by +Roxanne James on behalf of Propertyshowrooms.com
Business Partners
