Up and coming designers and architects

This weekend, FT.com features a list of up and coming potential celebrity designers and architects

ARCHITECTURE

Fashion Architecture Taste (FAT) Tel: +44 (0)20-7251 6735; www.fat.co.uk

6a Tel: +44 (0)20-7242 5422; www.6a.co.uk

De Rijke Marsh Morgan (DrMM) Tel: +44 (0)20-7803 0777; www.drmm.co.uk

Softroom Tel: +44 (0)20 7408 0864; www.softroom.com

Lynch Architects Tel: +44 (0)20-7739 5760; www.lyncharchitects.co.uk

INTERIOR DESIGN

Chris Dezille Tel: +44 (0)20-8673 4188; www.honky.co.uk

Jonathan Tuckey Tel: +44 (0)20-8960 1909; www.jonathantuckey.com

Nia Morris Tel: +44 (0)20-7586 5670; www.niamorrisdesign.com

Justin van Breda Tel: +44 (0)20-7730 3991; www.j-v-b.com

Suzy Hoodless Tel: +44 (0)20-7221 8844; www.suzyhoodless.com

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New York braces for Freedom Tower construction chaos

Like a long-awaited arrival of the cavalry, cranes and trucks finally showed up at ground zero last week. Soon, Lower Manhattan from the Battery up to Canal Street will be overflowing with hard hats, bright orange traffic cones, trucks, and noise. When the dust settles and about 15,000 construction workers head home - in roughly five or six years - the financial district will be entirely different.

Private developers and government agencies are preparing to pour more than $20 billion into new office and apartment buildings. But amid widespread enthusiasm that rebuilding is finally on track, nearly five years after the September 11, 2001, attacks, there is growing concern among those who live and work downtown about what the construction process will mean for them.

source

Shopping advice for Israel

Buying property in Israel may sound risky but, regardless of politics or terrorism, the number of foreign buyers constantly increases. In 2005, foreign buyers spent $1.2 billion here; in 2003, it was $190 million, according to Stuart Hershkowitz, deputy general manager of the international division of the Bank of Jerusalem, a mortgage bank that caters to English-speaking customers.
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Dubai makes waterfront plans

On the emirate's last remaining undeveloped land fronting the Gulf, the government is building a city called Dubai Waterfront.
At the moment, it is a vacant beachfront dotted with cranes. When it is finished, it will be a self-contained community larger than Manhattan, with housing for 700,000 people.
source

Bird's Eye View of Famous Homes

Zillow.com gives us the opportunity to observe bird's eye images of famous TV homes, including the "Happy Days" house, "Beverly Hills 90210" and of course The Playboy mansion [pictured]... too bad we can't see what's actually going on inside... link [source]

Fingerprinting made mandatory for Florida estate agents

Pursuant to Florida Statutes, electronic fingerprinting will be mandatory for all real estate sales associate and broker applicants, effective July 1, 2006. link

Forecast: UK HOUSE PRICES TO RISE 6.0 PER CENT THIS YEAR

CBRE Brokers Largest-Ever Silicon Valley Deal

In what is reported to be the largest transaction in Silicon Valley history, RREEF purchased a 5.3 million-square-foot, 119-building office/R&D portfolio from Peery-Arrillaga for what is rumored to be close to $1.1 billion. The acquisition makes RREEF one of the top three industrial holders in the region. CB Richard Ellis served as the broker on the transaction, representing both the buyer and the seller in a deal that closed yesterday.
source

Corcoran filming reality show "The Bubble"

Barbara Corcoran has been filming the pilot for a new TV reality show called "The Bubble." In a recent interview, the Corcoran Group founder compared the show to Donald Trump's "The Apprentice," except that people will, according to Corcoran, "get all the bells and whistles it takes to be a successful real estate broker."
source

Sneak Peek: Full Slant table by Rhubarb Decor

via Treehugger

Technically the Full Slant coffee table by Rhubarb Décor is both a coffee table and a bookshelf. It fuses a novel approach of displaying books utilizing their natural tendency to lean with the elegant nature of bamboo ply. The table was inspired by watching books housed between vertical walls. According to designer Todd Laby, "They seemed to try to find comfort by leaning awkwardly under the weight of gravity and yet were slowly damaging their spines. I decided to create useful spaces where books could recline naturally and still remain upright. Hence the name 'Slant'." The table is made from bamboo ply, chosen for its unique strength and beauty, as well as to showcase that sustainable materials are more then mere material substitutes, that their unique properties can both enhance and drive innovation to create ever more useful, modern and intriguing products. link

9/11 Freedom Tower Construction begins in NYC

NEW YORK (Reuters) - One day after resolving issues between a developer and landowners, bulldozers rumbled into a giant pit on Thursday to begin construction of the glittering Freedom Tower skyscraper meant to symbolize New York's resilience to the September 11 attacks.
The 1,776-foot (540-meter) tower will be among the tallest in the world.The 82-floor building's observation deck will reach 1,362 feet and its decorative spire will top out at 1,776 feet, a figure to match the year the American colonies declared independence from Britain.
source

Architects often lend their names to unlicensed colleagues

Architects who lend their names to colleagues without licenses are rampant in the industry, according to a Japanese government regulator.
The revelations come after former first-class architect Hidetsugu Aneha,[pictured], under fire for falsifying quake-resistance data was arrested Wednesday for lending his name to a construction company that employs no licensed architects. In return, Aneha is suspected of receiving millions of yen.
source

Your new estate agent: Asda

via RatandMouse
The Mirror has a great scoop this morning... Asda supermarkets (or, if you're reading this from America, Walmart) is apparently about to test the estate agency market, placing properties on in-store computers in the North East (of England, not London), and charging an Asda price commission of 1%. The idea's interesting. If it's successful, the plan is to roll it out nationally. Read the story here. But didn't we hear something similar about Tesco this time last year? That one died a silent death.

UK house prices "barely budge in April"

Dallas company wins bidding war for 5.6-acre land in L.A.'s booming Playa Vista

Lincoln Property Co. of Dallas has won a fierce bidding war over a 5.6-acre land parcel in L.A.'s booming Playa Vista, The Slatin Report has learned. Sources say Lincoln, a private company, is paying approximately $100 million for the site, which is entitled for some 800,000 square feet of office development. The site is part of the Bluff Creek Campus at the northeastern corner of the 1,067-acre master-planned community; the Campus area is entitled for a total of 3 million square feet of office space. When built out, this will be the first office development on the Campus, which was once supposed to house the headquarters of Dreamworks before that deal fell apart in the late 1990s, triggering a long fight over ownership and development of the entire Playa Vista site.
full report

Women stake claim in Arizona real estate market

Men still outnumber women by a substantial margin, its practitioners say. But women are becoming increasingly visible in the Valley's commercial real estate industry, putting together megadeals and networking their way to success.
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Spanish construction companies having "serious interest" in Bulgaria

A forum on Investment Opportunities in Construction and Real Estate in Bulgaria was held on 29 March, 2006 in Madrid. It was organized by the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade and the Trade department of the Spanish Embassy in Bulgaria.
InvestBulgaria Agency presented at the seminar the opportunities for Spanish investments in Bulgaria. Current issues related to the Bulgarian economy, particularly in the area of developing trade centres, logistics bases, industrial zones and tourist resorts have been discussed.Over 50 Spanish companies in the construction and real estate market attended the seminar, most of them already working in Bulgaria or having serious interest in investing in the country.
source

The Guy's Unstoppable !

Launches new travel search engine, developing 2.4 million-square-feet in Panama ... What more can I say ... Go Donald Go !

What Do High Gas Prices Mean For The Housing Market?

As gas prices climb higher and higher, the possibility that traditional surburban homebuyers will find the price/commute trade-off as no longer feasible is also quite high. This could drive down the price of housing in far-flung suburbs and put an additional premium on urban housing or real estate with easy access to public transit systems.
Of course, the other alternative for suburban commuters is the electric car. I test drove one last week. Unfortunately they're not very safe for highway commutes at the monment

via MortgageNewsDaily.com

Google Maps for Europe

Google Maps Mania reports that Google Maps now show street maps and driving directions for all of Europe.

read more | digg story

Canada: Aboriginal land protest turns ugly

The developers whose housing project triggered a seven-week-long standoff near Caledonia, Ont., say they will consider all options to end the dispute, which has left them frustrated by the government's handling of the case. via CBC

Tesco plans: "gear up and sell"

Britain's biggest retailer posted a 17 percent rise in full-year underlying profit on Tuesday, and said it would release 5 billion pounds ($8.95 billion) cash from its property portfolio.
Reuters

Trump in trouble ... again

Last week it emeregd that Donald J. Trump "donated" over 400 acres to New York State for the aptly named "Donald J. Trump State Park", but only after residents and local council refused his request to build a golf course.
This week, we learn that his plans to build "the greatest golf resort in the world" in Aberdeen Scotland is also running into planning and political problems:

When the announcement came last month ... it was clear meetings with Jack Mcconnell had influenced the decision to come to Scotland. Now questions are being raised over whether the First Minister's dealings with Donald Trump broke rules which require ministers to do nothing to prejudice the planning process. The Trump scheme would see a £300 million development including two championship courses, a luxury hotel and holiday properties on the Menie Estate near Balmedie. The Scottish Executive deny that Jack McConnell discussed the plans in detail when he met the billionaire last year. After the announcement, which came during Tartan Week in New York, the First Minister was careful to welcome the investment, but not the development itself. But the Green Party are calling for an investigation into Mr McConell's conduct. They are concerned about Mr Trump's threat to pull out of the development if plans for a nearby windfarm spoil the views from the resort. The US tycoon is due to arrive in Aberdeen on Friday to work out final proposals before submitting plans to Aberdeenshire Council next month.

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Institute predicts Ireland's housing market bubble

April 25 (Bloomberg) -- Rising property prices and higher interest rates have probably created a bubble for Ireland's housing market, the Economic and Social Research Institute said, expressing its concern about the record growth.
``We had an overvaluation of about 15 percent in 2005, according to the OECD,'' Alan Barrett, senior economist at the Dublin-based institute, said in a report published today. ``If you combine that with accelerating prices and interest rate increases, it's impossible not to come to the conclusion that the probability of there being a bubble has increased.'' The ESRI warning comes two weeks after Ireland's central bank said the housing boom may be unsustainable and poses a ``significant risk'' to the economy. Irish house prices have almost quadrupled in the past decade as companies add workers, fueling demand for property. Mortgage debt has more than doubled in the past three years. House prices may decline by more than 15 percent if the property bubble bursts, according to Barrett, who said he takes the over-valuation estimate by the Paris-based OECD ``very seriously.''

Bloomberg.com

U.S. Army seeks developer to purchase prime Los Angeles real estate

Russell Simmons update ...

Not sure if it's anything to do with the pending divorce, but Simmons is now asking just under $6 mill for his Manhattan lovenest; reduced from $7.2 million as we reported this past Valentines day.

Fort Knox changes drive residential growth

It seems as though the current rise in gold and precious metal prices are having a direct impact on the residential market at Fort Knox USA; home of the world's second largest gold reserve.
Newsweek reports that the US government and military are in the process of beefing up operations around Fort Knox, which is causing an unprecedented surge in the local market, even as national house prices cool off:

To avoid paying higher prices, some buyers are making purchases without even seeing the home in person ... one client, a family that is moving from Germany to Hardin County in June, purchased their house in January, relying on about 100 photographs posted on a Web page. "We need more homes to keep prices down, it's definitely going to be a sellers market."

MSNBC.com

RBS to buy Marriott hotels for £1 bln

Whats up with Iceland?

Iceland currently has a fertility (TFR) of 2.0, it has a life expectancy of 80.19 (which is comparatively high), and it has a median age of 34 . Now it is this latter median-age data point which produced the wow sensation, since this is very young, and puts it in the same zone as the United States, Ireland and New Zealand, ie by median age it is the archetypal country par excellance to be having the kind of credit/housing driven boom, and balance of payments deficit it has been experiencing.


via Demography Matters

Breaking News: Earls Court (London) back on the market

THE owner of the Earls Court & Olympia Group is to restart its £400 million sale process from scratch after parting company with UBS, the investment bank handling the auction. St James Capital has replaced UBS with Michael Elliott & Partners, the niche property consultant, because it believes the majority of the value of the business is the real estate. The owner of the London concert hall and exhibition venues group replaced UBS in an attempt to secure higher bids.
It is understood that UBS, which has successfully sold Earls Court & Olympia Group twice before, managed to secure a bid of close to £350 million, but the owners were not satisfied and wanted a price of nearer £400 million. Michael Elliott is working on the sale along with LongAcre Partners, the corporate financier. If Earls Court & Olympia Group is sold for £400 million, it would generate huge profits for St James Capital, which bought the venues for £240 million in 2004.
Ananda Krishnan, the Malaysian billionaire who controls the ExCel exhibition centre, Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club, and Stanhope, the private property company run by David Camp, are among the parties which have previously been cited as interested in the venue. However it is unclear whether they remain interested.
According to Property Week, the sale process has now begun afresh. The Earls Court & Olympia Group comprises one of the UK’s biggest exhibition centres, two conference centres and a lease on the Brewery conference venue on Chiswell Street in the City of London.

Times Online

Hanging With Mariah

The latest issue of InStyle Home provides in depth coverage of Mariah Carey's triplex penthouse. Having over 12,000 square feet, the best-selling singer has filled the Tribeca spread with many possessions.








via Observer

Nigeria may be removed from money laundering blacklist

The International Financial Action Task Force has announced a visit to Nigeria between May 9 and 11, 2006.
This visit is expected to herald the country’s removal from the list of non-cooperating countries during the FATF’s forthcoming plenary session in Paris in June 2006. Senior Special Assistant to President Obasanjo on Media, Mrs. Oluremi Oyo, disclosed this in a statement in Abuja on Wednesday. She said that the FATF moved Nigeria to the final stage of the de-listing process at its February meeting in Cape Town, South Africa. This followed the organisation’s satisfaction with efforts made by the Nigeria government in the implementation of its anti-money laundering and terrorist financing laws and regulations.
developing

According to IBM...

America is taking over London

More Spanish drama ...

Los Alcázares Municipal architect under investigation

Dramatic changes likely in Spanish real estate

Both the Socialist Party and the left wing coalition I.U. are presenting the suggestion that the Spanish Attorney General be given new powers to chase town planning crimes, and they consider that what is needed in Spain is the creation of a new prosecutor to work specifically in the real estate field.
There can be no doubt that recent events in Marbella, where as many as 30,000 homes have officially been constructed illegally, have increased the possibility of such a new office being created.

source-Typically Spanish News

Marbella update: parties reach agreement

The four political parties involved in negotiations over the management board that is to govern the city of Marbella until the next municipal elections in 2007; agreed that the board's permanent commission would have six members.
Spokeswoman Marisa Bustinduy was happy that "all political parties are involved, and none of them is working against the board or delegitimizing it." Spokesman Joaquin Ramirez admitted that the negotiations had been "complex, with agreement reached at the very end." The Marbella municipal government was dissolved in the wake of a €2.4 billion corruption scandal.

source - The Spain Herald

The Lo-down on London ...

It has exclusive shops, fabulously luxurious homes and a glamorous cultural scene, but this is not what has made London the destination of choice for the world's multi-billionaires. For the ultra-rich few, this country is now a virtual tax haven, which is why more and more princes, tycoons and oligarchs are making it their home. The Guardian sets out to uncover the secrets of Britain's seriously wealthy

Affluent buyers drive UK prices up

The just released Rightmove index


Top ten London Boroughs (Annual % change)

Islington (20.4)
Hackney (19.9)
Hammersmith and Fulham (16.3)
Newham (11.9)
Lambeth (11.7)
Tower Hamlets (11.1)
Wandsworth (9.4)
Richmond-upon-Thames (8.5)
Southwark (8.2)
Greenwich (7.6)

The next New Orleans?

This year is likely to be another bad one for hurricanes, according to a forecast issued recently by a Paris based scientific team that accurately predicted the catastrophic 2005 storm season. And although California doesnt get hurricanes, the area is prone to natural disasters including earthquakes and bushfires.
The NY Times posed questions to California based geologist Jeffrey Mount who apparently has "done a lot of thinking about water." Last fall, Dr Mount was unceremoniously terminated by The Terminator from his post at the California State Reclamation Board; a statutory body whose mandate includes overseeing the state's levee system. He had suggested publicly that Sacramento might be vulnerable to a Hurricane Katrina-like disaster.

Q.
If you were making a bet, where would you say the next New Orleans will be?
A.
I'd say the Sacramento area. The common denominator is concentrated urban development in the shadow of flooding and levees. You have around 400,000 people at risk from flooding, and the number will grow in the next few years because of intense development. The city's main problem is that it is situated between the American and the Sacramento Rivers and at the base of the 12,000 foot Sierra Nevada range. Both rivers are prone to flooding. Additionally, powerful storms come in from the Pacific, slam against the mountains and dump heavy precipitation that ends up very quickly in the rivers.
Q.
Why is there so much development in risky places?
A.
Because the new gold rush in California is real estate. Moreover, local governments are often reluctant to exert controls over developers because of the tax revolution. Do you remember Proposition 13 in 1978, which limited increases in property taxes on existing homes? It decimated the ability of localities to fund services. So money for basic services that people expect is now raised through growth. Many municipalities have become very aggressive about development. I heard a Northern California county supervisor say that his county needed development on its flood plain to fund flood control projects.

via - NYTimes

Senior Housing—from "Niche" to "Riche"

Senior housing, a "niche" real estate market, is getting a lot of attention from investors these days. This is not surprising: the share of population aged 65 and over has been steadily increasing since 2000, with over half a million people joining that club every year.
full report

Toronto's niche market is no longer niche

John Meehan, president Toronto Real Estate Board:

"Year after year the property values keep rising and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight, despite the predictions, when you look at cities like Boston and Chicago, I would suspect that we're very much the same. It used to be considered the alternate lifestyle and now it's the preferred lifestyle. This niche market is no longer just a niche."

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Soho, Tribeca - priciest rents in New York