€300-350m golf village planned near Budapest

Prices of new apartments falling in Bourgas

ECB raises interest rates to 4%

Building escalated on Black Sea coast despite current oversupply

New $600m luxury resort launched in Tangier, Morocco

China’s rising commercial market

One third of all Middle East construction is in the UAE

Property investors returning to market in Australia

€300-350m golf village planned near Budapest

An Irish-Hungarian real estate developer is investing €300-350m to build a golf village in Bicske, a town 38km west of Budapest, on a plot of 280 hectares.

The 100-hectare golf course at Budapest Gate Country Club will be designed by Irish golf champion Christy O’Connor, best known for winning the 1989 Ryder Cup for Europe. The company of the 59-year-old former professional golfer has designed several greens worldwide, including courses in Ireland, Spain, Portugal and the United States.

The land, formerly an industrial park, is especially suitable for golf-course development, according to O’Connor, because it includes a lake next to sandy beaches, restaurants, and water sport facilities.

The 18-hole golf course will host professional tournaments. The first such event is planned for 2010, when the course opens. The facility will include villas and duplexes, ten apartment buildings, and a five-star hotel with 160 suites and 20 penthouses, spa and wellness facilities and a conference center that can host 1,250 visitors.

Since the village can host 3,000 residents and is near Budapest, the developer expects mostly permanent residents to settle in the golf village and to commute to work in the capital.

The smallest apartments will cost around €96,000, while prices of larger villas will start at €320,000. The condominiums are offered to both Irish and Hungarian investors. Construction work will start in autumn 2007, and the first buildings will be completed by the end of 2009.

According to research undertaken by KPMG, Central and Eastern Europe now has 135 golf courses, compared to just 45 six years ago, servicing 40,000 registered players. In Hungary, however, the number of registered golfers represents just 0.021% of the population, according to business daily Napi Gazdaság.

Within the region, the most golf courses (68) are in the Czech Republic, while Hungary is in 4th place with just seven, but this number is expected to double over the next two years.

Prices of new apartments falling in Bourgas

Average prices of new apartments in some regions of Bulgaria’s coastal town of Bourgas went down in May. Apartment prices in the centre of Bourgas are reported to have decreased by 4% to €1,050sqm and by 6% in the regions near the centre compared to April figures, according to local real estate agency Foros.

Varna registered no changes in its apartment prices either, currently costing €1,000-1300sqm. The company reported that prices are static in some residential district in Sofia, while in the centre of the capital they increased by 1.94% to reach an average of €1,050sqm.

ECB raises interest rates to 4%

The European Central Bank (ECB) has raised interest rates in the 13-strong Eurozone to 4% - double the level of 18 months ago.

The 0.25% hike to 4% is the eighth since the ECB first started raising interest rates back in December 2005, after remaining stable for two and a half years at 2%. The misery for UK property investors with Euro mortgages is unlikely to end there, however. The ECB is now expected to implement two or more similar rate rises later this year.

Building escalated on Black Sea coast despite current oversupply

Despite property prices falling by around 5% in May in Bulgaria’s coastal town of Bourgas, the majority of the apartments in the construction pipeline in Bulgaria will be located near the country’s biggest resorts, with 20% of the national total being built in Bourgas.

Residential property projects totaling 1.77m sqm received construction permits in the first three months of 2007 and data provided by the National Statistical Institute (NSI) showed that 75% of these apartments will be located in the regions of Bourgas, Varna and Dobrich, along the Black Sea coast, and near the mountain resorts of Bansko, Razlog, Pamporovo and Borovets.

Nearly 20% of all apartments to be constructed will be located in the Bourgas region. Between January and April 2007, Dobrich municipality issued nearly 41% more construction permits than it did throughout 2006. Twice as many apartments will be constructed in the Varna region this year, compared to 2006.

New $600m luxury resort launched in Tangier, Morocco

Qatari Diar has announced the launch of Al Houara Resort, a luxury resort in Tangier, Morocco.

The $600m resort will span 230 hectares of coastal land and will comprise two 5-star hotels (620 beds) and a 4-star hotel (888 beds).

There will also be 199 villas and 415 apartments available either at the golf resort, in the forest or by the beach.

Construction is expected to take around 24 months, with a targeted completion date of June 2009. Sales will be handled by Sotheby's International, with agents available in Casablanca, Morocco and Doha, Qatar.

China’s rising commercial market

China´s commercial real estate transactions leapt 68% year-on-year to US$9.2bn in 2006, the third largest in the Asia-Pacific, according to the latest report published by global real estate service provider Jones Lang LaSalle.

The report also says that China will play a more active role in global real estate markets after Chinese insurance capital and the state foreign exchange reserve get approval to invest in overseas property assets.

In 2006, China´s real estate transaction made up 10% of the Asia-Pacific total, next only to Japan and Australia in the region.

Jones Lang LaSalle predicts that China will become a commercial real estate market as large as that of the US, the UK, Germany and Japan in five years.

The report says that overly high speculative investments have dragged down the economic returns on properties in the Asia-Pacific area, but the profit margin is still at a relatively high level and provides abundant development opportunities.

The company says once the Chinese government loosens control on insurance capital, about $24-36bn of capital will flow into the real estate market.

One third of all Middle East construction is in the UAE

Construction taking place in the UAE is currently valued at $230bn, which accounts for one-third of the entire Middle East's real estate projects, according to Ahmad Al Sayegh, chairman of Abu Dhabi-based Aldar Properties.

Al Sayegh made the announcement to around 400 of the world's most influential real estate investors at the Citi Asia Pacific Property Conference, held in Singapore, to discuss property investment opportunities in Abu Dhabi.

Property investors returning to market in Australia

After stagnant capital growth and low yields of late, rents are rising again in Australia, luring property investors back into the market.

Rental vacancy rates Australia-wide have plunged to about 1.4% from 3.8% over the past three years. A building shortfall is expected to force vacancy rates to 20-year-plus lows of less than 1% by the end of this year, according to ANZ Bank.

In the year to the end of the March 2007, rents rose 4.4% nationwide, with house prices up 8.6%, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Strong growth in Perth pushed up the national figure, but house prices rose elsewhere, including 10.2% in Brisbane, 10.5% in Hobart and 15% in Darwin. However, Sydney house prices edged up by just 1.5%, after falling in 2004 and 2005.

Buy-to-let investors are now reported to account for more than 30% of new housing loans.

In Sydney, Australian research company BIS Shrapnel forecasts that rents will rise 40% in the next five years, or 7% a year. The rise is expected to lift yields to 4.5-5% in the city.