A bitter struggle is underway this week following Ukraine’s parliamentary election last weekend. Ukraine’s pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko has called for an investigation into vote counting after both polling parties claimed victory at the same time but his rival, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, said his party had won the parliamentary poll and was entitled to govern the country.
The ex-Soviet state’s ‘orange’ opposition, allied to Yushchenko, earlier claimed victory in Sunday’s election on the basis of exit polls and early returns, after counting three-quarters of votes from the country’s 47m citizens.
“I am concerned by the delayed vote count in eastern and southern Ukraine”, a sombre Yushchenko said in a televised address to the nation. “I order law enforcement bodies to start an immediate investigation into the causes and circumstances of delayed vote count reports from polling stations.”
Bulgaria has the least affordable property in Europe
Properazzi, the property search engine, has declared that Bulgaria has the least affordable property for its domestic citizens in the European Union, according to its latest research.
The company says that Bulgaria’s average annual salary is currently €1,884 and the average cost of a home in the country is €54,570. Although the eastern European country has some of the lowest prices on the continent low average earnings mean property remains expensive.
The average wage means it costs the equivalent of 29 years’ salary to pay for a property in Bulgaria, compared to an average of just nine years in the UK.
The average property price in the UK is €344,980 – the highest in Europe - compared to an average wage of €38,538.
“The daily story is one of British buyers struggling to afford property but the figures show otherwise”, commented Properazzi chief executive Yannick Laclau.
Denmark came atop of the ranking with a home worth 5.3 annual salaries. Sweden and Finland follow close behind, with averages of 5.4 and 5.5 years respectively.
Among western European nations Spain has the lowest level of property affordability with 12 years worth of salary required to meet the costs of a property.
Poland and the Czech Republic are among those that are lower down the affordability ladder, with 15.6 and 11 years salary required to buy a property in each country respectively.
New flight route to link London and Berlin in record time
Lufthansa will launch flights from London City Airport to Berlin next January. The German national carrier will operate twice-daily flights to Berlin Tegel Airport from 14 January 2007. The new route will be the fastest connection available for passengers travelling between the centres of both cities.
In the summer months the frequency of flights will be increased to three times a day. Lufthansa will use 89-seater jets for the 100 minute flight. Lufthansa’s UK manager, Marianne Sammann, said: “We are discovering a strong demand for new city routes serving the mobility needs of UK and German business travellers. Berlin, as Europe’s new conference and exhibition metropolis, is now just around the corner from London’s financial district and the perfect destination for this speedy new service.”
Brussels becomes a London commuter town
Eurostar set a new Brussels to London rail speed record of 1 hour and 43 minutes at the end of September, travelling at 186 miles per hour on the long-awaited high speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link to London's St Pancras station.
The trip, which slashed around half an hour off the normal journey time to London, followed a similar inaugural run from Paris to London at the start of this month, and now means that commuting to London from Brussels is no more time consuming than commuting from UK cities like Birmingham or even south coastal towns like Ramsgate.
Eurostar chief executive, Richard Brown, said: “Travellers will be able to reach Brussels, and cities throughout Belgium and France, in journey times that are competitive with flying, using trains that are more productive for business travellers, and more relaxing for leisure travellers.
“Eurostar is quite simply the fastest, most convenient way to travel – avoiding wasted time and money in getting to out-of-town airports, lengthy check-in times, and baggage reclaim delays.”
The switch from Waterloo station to St Pancras in north London takes place on 14 November 2007 and with more people opting to work part-time from home and part-time in the office, many Londoners could soon be tempted to commute from Brussels as property prices in the centre of the city are three times cheaper than central London. However, purchasing costs in Belgium can be as high as 15% of the purchase price.
Worldwide News
Major railways planned in UAE
Plans for the Emirates Railway, a 350km national railway network that is expected to help ease road congestion in the UAE, are nearly finalised, a government minister announced on 1 st October.
Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansouri, Minister of Government Sector Development, announced that the network will link Abu Dhabi to the east coast and will eventually be connected with the proposed GCC-wide (the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council) railway network.
“It is one of the strategic plans of the UAE government to create a railway system for both passengers and cargo and will ease a lot of the trucking congestion”, Al Manaouri told Gulf News.
With population growth in Arab capitals putting greater pressure on roads, governments are looking at building railway networks. GCC states have spoken about the need for creating a GCC-wide railway network for many years, but as yet, no plans have been formalised.
French train manufacturer Alstom, which is bidding for projects in the Gulf, has said the planned $3bn rail system across the Emirates will be 700km long and connect Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah to Ghewaifat through Sharjah, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
A consortium, led by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, is currently building a $4.2bn urban rail network in Dubai which will be ready by 2010.
Abu Dhabi is also working on a plan for an inter-city train network and metro lines to create a transport system under its ‘Plan Abu Dhabi 2030' Plan, which will see an expansion of the transport network to accommodate the expected growth of the emirate’s population to 3m by that year.
Qatar rents expected to stabilise over the next 12 months
Qatar ’s Minister of Finance Youssef Hussein Kamal has said that rents in the country should stabilise during the next 12 months before coming down even further at the end of 2008, reported Reuters.
Between 2001 and 2006, residential rental prices in Qatar surged by 168% due to a shortage of residential units and higher building costs. But rents in Qatar rose just 1.6% in the second quarter of this year, compared with 1.9% in the first quarter, reflecting an annual rise of just over 7%.
US construction slows to 12 year low
Home construction starts in the US fell by 2.6% in August to their lowest level in more than 12 years while building permit activity, a sign of future construction plans, also dropped to a low not seen since mid-1995, a government report at the end of September showed.
Building permits fell 5.9% to an annual rate of 1.3m, the lowest since June 1995. By region, the drop in housing starts was the worst in the Northeast, where they fell 38% in August, which is the sharpest drop since December 1990. Starts were down 18% in the West but rose 4.2% in the Midwest and 11.4% in the South.
For some economists, the weak housing data reinforced the belief that the sector will continue to weigh on economic growth.
Property market in Singapore heading for a correction
Singapore ’s residential property market is heading for a correction according to local analysts that predict a building boom could flood the country with new homes by 2009.
Property prices, which have surged over the past three years, are currently static, but analysts say the market is increasingly vulnerable to a sudden downturn in sentiment.
Global property investor LaSalle Investment Management, which has $6bn of real estate assets in Asia, reports that the Singapore residential property is ‘fully priced’ and will consolidate before appreciating any further.
“By global standards, Singapore luxury apartments are very expensive. At some point, affordability and common sense have to come in”, reportedly said Jack Chandler, LaSalle Investment Asia-Pacific CEO.
Singapore luxury homes cost around £8,000sqm, up 50% from a year ago, compared to Hong Kong’s 13% rise in capital values to around 9,000sqm.
Property market sentiment has been supported by Singapore’s long-term goal to boost the island’s population to 6.5m from 4.5m, but analysts are still forecasting an excess of new homes available from the end of 2008 onwards and many lenders are expected to lower their current offerings of 80-90% LTV mortgages.
