Home Craze Gazumps London With Record Prices, $500,000 Parking

(Bloomberg) The decade-long leap in prices has made London the most expensive city in the world for high-end homes -- costlier per square foot than Monaco, New York, Hong Kong or Tokyo, according to Knight Frank, which says prime London houses cost about 5 million pounds and prime flats run about 2.5 million pounds.

London property rental market

The most expensive London property currently on the market is in Belgrave Square, with 11 bedrooms. Savills has the Knightsbridge property up for sale at £35 million. The most desirable area in London appears to be the N1 postocde area. It had nearly 10% of all property searches in May, and has topped the table for three months running. Zooming in even closer, the most popular street in London appears to be leafy Bishops Park Road in Fulham, which has been in the top two for three months in succession.

Royal Birkdale -- England's sleeping golf giant

There are some 3,000 golf courses in the British Isles, the geographic term that encompasses England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Fully two thirds of these courses are located in England, including 49 of the top ranked 100. Yet for reasons unknown, English golf remains virtually ignored by the vast majority of American golfers who cross the Atlantic each year to experience the game in its homeland.

London ''becoming property rich city state''

London''s strong financial sector and rising wealth levels have led to the average house price in the capital surpassing £300,000 for the first time, a new study has shown.Halifax''s quarterly house price index has revealed that the average price of a home in London is now £313,122, bolstered by a quarterly price inflation rate of 4.9 per cent.

A Victorian-era sea fort is up for sale in Britain at a cost of $8 million

he fort, located 1 mile off the coast of Portsmouth, was originally built to house 80 sailors as a defense against the French navy. Recently it served as a luxury hotel, but its owner has been forced to sell it due to financial troubles. No Man's Land Fort, as it is known, was built between 1861 and 1880. The fort is constructed largely of granite and is 200 feet long and rises 60 feet from the sea. The fort features 21 themed rooms, two helipads and a heated indoor pool.

Alrov looking to buy London property for 58 million euros

Tel Aviv-based Alrov Real Estate is bidding on property in London’s Covent Garden it plans to convert into a 150-room hotel, the Broitis State Gazette reported. Alrov, owned by developer Alfred Akirov, has reportedly offered a sum of 58 million euros for the building. The company owns 23 assets in Switzerland, France and Israel; its activity abroad is run mainly thought its subsidiary PIH, which is due to make an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange next week.

ING Real Estate wins pension fund

LONDON (Reuters) - ING Real Estate said on Tuesday it had won one of the UK's biggest property investment contracts, a 560 million pound advisory mandate by the West Midlands Metropolitan Pension Fund. The 8 billion-pound pension fund, which manages the retirement savings of public sector workers in England's second city, Birmingham, and its surrounding area, had previously used property services firm Cushman & Wakefield to manage its UK property holdings.

Prescott’s ‘cheap’ homes soar in price

The developers, George Wimpey Homes, argue that the high value of land in the area meant they could not realistically be sold for less. The scheme launched by Prescott more than two years ago when he was deputy prime minister may now look like a naive attempt to buck the booming property market.

England Real Estate´s Harsh Realities

Art, stocks, houses - they're all going up. And the people who own them feel they are much richer. But is this increase real? Are these assets actually worth more? Or are they merely being teased up in price by a higher volume of money? When you need to make a monthly mortgage payment, there is not much fantasy or romance to it. It is real. When you don't have the money

UK banks sell off heaquarters

The Real Estate sector of the UK stock market continues to subside. Since January it is down nearly 20% and very considerably underperforming the FTSE 100, which over the same period has been positive. Several of the major banks have sold their expensive head offices and other premises and leased them back, getting top dollar for the assets and, at the same time, leasing when rent yields are at historic lows – their action probably confirms a significant property market top.

Two real estate markets, written by UK estate agent

Recent interest rate rises are leading to a ‘cooling’ of the UK’s mainstream residential market outside of the southeast, according to a trading statement by property agent Savills. But prime markets like London continue to be buoyant, while ‘super prime’ or luxury markets have continued to rise strongly, the London-based agency said.

UK commercial real estate funds lose currency

Last month, property company Brixton warned of a potential backlash from retail investors and a surge in redemptions as property returns slowed after a long boom. "The man on the street is flooding into commercial property and has been for two to three years now, arguably just at the time as the cycle is about to wane and turn, which is massively dangerous to the credibility of our market, particularly with the REIT legislation just kicking off," chief executive Tim Wheeler said.

Sky-high central London office rents mean that investors are paying record amounts for commercial real estate

A total of 14 buildings worldwide sold for more than $1 billion in the first half of this year – five of these have been in London. Earlier this week, Royal Bank of Scotland Group sold the 42-storey Citigroup European headquarters in Canary Wharf, London, to Irish investor Derek Quinlan for the sum of $2 billion, representing the second largest property transaction in British history.

Citigroup's London Base Is Sold for 1 Billion Pounds

July 2 (Bloomberg) -- The 42-story building in London's Canary Wharf that serves as Citigroup Inc.'s European headquarters was bought by Derek Quinlan, an Irish investor, and Propinvest Holdings Ltd. for about 1 billion pounds ($2 billion).

UK's young REITs may face extended bear market

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's property stocks may face an extended bear market as the returns slow on bricks and mortar, leaving market bulls with nothing to lean on but hopes for property company takeovers.