Floating into Germany's commercial market

Dawnay Day Treveria, a company that has been set up with the sole intention of investing in German commercial property, has announced that it plans to float on London's stock exchange in an attempt to raise as much as 350-450 million Euros.

"They have got a very substantial pipeline (of investment projects) and in order to fund that they need several hundred million Euros of equity," a source close to the transaction said.

The source added: "There is a very big first-mover advantage because there are no other public vehicles out there that allow you to invest in German property."

US economists fear a housing collapse

In a fairly alarming report, the residential property market in the United States of America could be set to collapse, which could devastate the country's economy, according to economists and investors who have witnessed property prices appreciate enormously over the past couple of years.

"The collapse of the housing bubble will throw the economy into a recession, and quite likely a severe recession," warned a July report by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research.

"The demographic story behind the housing market boom, as we always thought, was a giant hoax," wrote Merrill Lynch & Co.'s North American Economist, David Rosenberg, in a recent report.

Lehman Brothers, an innovator in global finance, estimates that one-third of the past year's U.S. economic growth was a consequence of the country's housing boom.

A downturn in housing could mean the loss of millions of jobs. The Centre for Economic and Policy Research forecasts that as many as 6.3 million jobs could be lost if the housing bubble in the US bursts.