Hines Said Eyeing $385M North Sydney Office Tower and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

100 Mount Street in North Sydney (Image: Sidespace)

US developer and fund manager Hines leads today’s headline roundup with tentative plans to buy a North Sydney skyscraper. Also in the news, Hong Kong’s New World Development sells a Kowloon industrial tower and Singapore’s GIC seeks more bids for a landmark Seoul building.

Hines Said in Talks to Buy $385M North Sydney Office Tower From Dexus
US investment manager Hines is looking to put its stamp on North Sydney’s office market with the purchase of the skyscraper at 100 Mount Street for more than A$600 million ($385 million).

The move on the tower, which is in its early stages, would lock in a re-rating of Sydney’s “second city” in the wake of the Victoria Cross Metro Station opening, which has driven a surge of interest in the area. The tower is owned by property company Dexus and its flagship wholesale fund, both of which have been selling assets, and a disposal would show that values of even premium assets have dropped. Read more>>

New World Reportedly Sells Hong Kong Industrial Tower for $80M
Embattled Hong Kong builder New World Development sold an industrial building in the city’s Kowloon area for HK$620 million ($80 million), Sing Tao Daily reported, citing unidentified people.

The 22-storey tower Artisan Lab is located in the industrial area of San Po Kong. The sale is part of the developer’s plan to offload non-core assets to alleviate a liquidity crunch at the city’s most indebted major real estate firm. Read more>>

GIC Said to Open Second Tender for Seoul Tower After Bids Fall Short
Singapore’s GIC, the world’s sixth-largest sovereign wealth fund, is set to seek more proposals from bidders to sell a landmark building in Seoul as bids fell short of earlier estimates.

GIC and CBRE, the manager of the sale of Seoul Finance Center, plan to hold another tender on Wednesday for existing bidders such as BentallGreenOak and South Korean asset managers Koramco REITs Management and Trust and its subsidiary Koramco Asset Management, according to investment banking industry sources. Read more>>

Weave Living Opens Second Seoul Location
Weave Suites Sunyu Parkside, Weave Living’s newest property in South Korea, opened on 3 December in the Yeouido business district of western Seoul. It’s Weave’s second property in Seoul, after Weave Place in Hoegi opened in August.

Weave Suites Sunyu Parkside is 14 storeys high with two underground floors for parking. The building’s first underground floor is a shared space, equipped with a gym and yoga studio, golf range, meeting rooms and a lounge. Read more>>

SGX-Listed Dasin Retail Trust Won’t Renew Management Deals for China Malls
Dasin Retail Trust will not be renewing commercial and property management agreements for four of its properties — Shiqi Metro Mall, Xiaolan Metro Mall, Ocean Metro Mall and Dasin E-Colour — upon their expiry on 31 December 2024.

On Wednesday, the trustee-manager said its board has resolved to terminate the deals with the malls’ rental management companies, although its minority directors, Zhang Zhencheng and his alternate director Zhang Zhongming, had not voted on the resolutions to do so. Read more>>

Home Sales Accelerate as Prices Drop in Top Chinese Cities
Lived-in home sales in some of China’s largest cities are picking up, but prices remain subdued, with Japanese investment bank Nomura noting that the property crisis weighing on the economy for nearly four years is far from over.

In Shenzhen, a total of 2,390 second-hand homes changed hands last week, the most in more than three years, according to data compiled by the Shenzhen Real Estate Intermediary Association. Similar trends have been observed in other major cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, where second-hand home transactions have increased in recent months. Read more>>

Will Cuscaden Peak Sell Singapore’s Paragon Mall?
When a consortium wins a tough takeover battle to buy a bunch of property assets, the spoils of victory can be shared by selling the assets for a profit and returning cash to the consortium partners.

In 2022, investment vehicle Cuscaden Peak — owned by a consortium of Hotel Properties Ltd and Temasek’s Mapletree Investments and CLA Real Estate Holdings — acquired the then-listed Singapore Press Holdings, which was largely a property business after spinning off its media assets. SPH was renamed Cuscaden Peak Investments after its privatisation in May 2022 and is now wholly owned by Cuscaden Peak. Read more>>

Dim Prospects Seen for Singapore’s Suburban Business Parks
The business park segment in Singapore has been besieged by concerns about whether new space in the pipeline could be absorbed, and increasing vacancy rates due to consolidation activities among companies looking to cut costs and use the workspace more efficiently.

Islandwide vacancy rates for business parks rose to 21.1 percent in Q3 2024 from 19.5 percent in the year-ago period. The amount of vacant space was much higher for suburban business parks, at 32.2 percent, against the 8.6 percent vacancy rate in city-fringe business parks. Read more>>

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