U.K. Housing Market Improves as London Survey Shows Increase

July 14 (Bloomberg) -- The U.K. housing market improved last month as more London real-estate agents and surveyors said home values increased rather than fell for the first time in 20 months, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said.

Across Britain, the number of respondents saying prices dropped exceeded those reporting gains by 18.1 percentage points, the highest reading since September 2007, RICS said in its monthly survey released today in London. The balance for the capital became positive for the first time since October 2007.

London's luxury property market ticks up

New property stats: rich investors opt for top-end London, a popular city for well-heeled South African residential real estate buyers.

In another sign that the world's well-heeled are finding property an attractive and relatively safe bet, the latest residential figures for super-prime London properties shows prices rising for the first time this year.

Investors Back in Market for British Real Estate

Investors returning to the battered British commercial property market are snapping up offices and shopping centers for 75 percent less than at the peak of the market in 2007, according to the real estate adviser DTZ.

That decline was less than the 89 percent drop in the United States or 80 percent in the Asia Pacific region. But in Britain, the speed of the decline was faster — transaction volumes shrank 51 percent in the three months after their peak compared with 35 percent in the United States and 19 percent in Asia.

Some analysts said this rapid correction was now helping the British market recover faster than those in New York, Tokyo or Frankfurt.

Bahrain's Salam buys London property worth $220 mln

MANAMA, June 14 (Reuters) - Bahrain-based Islamic bank Al Salam said on Sunday it acquired London's Milton Gate office tower from UBS Triton Fund in a deal worth more than $220 million as Gulf Arab investors return to Western property markets.

The bank said in a regulatory statement it acquired the property in partnership with privately owned investment house Evans Randall.

It said it expected the investment to generate cash yields of at least 10 percent per year, and that it was considering further private equity and real estate deals in Europe.

Gulf Arab investors have been holding on to funds for months after the region was caught up in the global liquidity freeze late last year, but are now buying into Western real estate again to benefit from lower valuations.