International Property Journal - News and information on global property markets

The island where “Eat, Pray, Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert found love continues to block foreign ownership of property.

Bali attracts more than 2 million tourists a year--a number which is expected to grow when the movie version of Gilbert’s book is released in August. However, strict Constitutional restrictions on non-citizens directly owning land dampen international interest in real estate.

Jones Lang LaSalle’s latest study found global commercial real estate investment has more than doubled since the dark days of 2009, which makes for a nice headline.

But the real story was the disparity in investment activity from region to region. Asia, for example, saw investment volumes drop by 34 percent from the first quarter of 2010, despite increases in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Pondering this year’s Best Tall Building award winners, architecture geeks will find much to love and loath.

The annual awards, presented by the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, recognize projects that have made “extraordinary contributions to the advancement of tall buildings and the urban environment, and that achieve sustainability at the highest and broadest level.”

In others words, skyscrapers must show something more than a little flash and sparkle to win. To their credit, CTBUH judges don’t simply pander to the outrageous towers designed to gain attention, projects that offer plenty of bells and whistles on the outside, but little engineering on the inside.

That said, skyscrapers are meant to be ostentatious and grand, jaw-dropping and brash, inspiring devoted followings with their flair. Some may disagree, but this year’s regional winners deliver the goods:

Soon after VinaCapital Real Estate launched the Danang Beach Resort in 2007, the sales results forced the developers to rewrite the business plan.

“The original target audience was mostly international, with pricing starting at $1.2 million,” said David Blackhall, the deputy managing director of real estate for VinaCapital Group, the Vietnam-focused firm with $1.7 billion in assets under management.

The 260-hectare mixed development with two golf courses was designed to offer global investors interested in Vietnam the type of resort opportunity they might find in Phuket or the Caribbean. With the first golf course designed by Greg Norman, the beach resort’s original layout included 600 residential units.

Of the myriad of annual studies measuring everything from home buying habits to the favorite ice cream of billionaires, the Merrill Lynch/CapGemini World Wealth Report is one of my favorites.

The report primarily tracks the number of wealthy people in the world, the volume of people who can call themselves millionaires. Of course, a million doesn’t go very far these days, so instead of measuring the filthy rich, the report really tracks simply those people doing pretty good, the people making money or losing it.

Nine months after announcing that it had sold the most expensive apartment in the world, a Hong Kong developer says the deal has collapsed.

Last October the un-named buyer agreed to pay $57 million for the penthouse in 39 Conduit Road, a whopping HK$88,000 per square foot (about $11,000 a square foot). But Henderson Land says the buyer has walked away from the deal, as well as five other apartments in the building, the Financial Times reports.

Asian investors are purchasing central London property in unprecedented numbers and now account for 20 percent of all new build sales, a new report concludes.

In the last year, buyers from Asia represented 49 percent of the homes purchased as investments, compared to only 36 percent from the U.K., according to the new international report from property company Knight Frank.

“While the market has returned to life, after it pretty much shut-down in 2008, current international investment demand is almost totally concentrated on London and is primarily coming from Asia,” said Knight Frank residential research director Liam Bailey.

NUSA DUA, Bali--Despite the struggles of world property markets, FIABCI was able to grow its membership ranks by 6 percent last year, executives said during the FIABCI World Congress.

The Paris-based organization, known colloquially as the International Real Estate Federation, credits the jump to interest in a new social media networking function and growth of its education program, FIABCI University.

“Members want training,” said FIABCI president Lisa Kurrass.

The mania for Hong Kong luxury property reached another milestone this week, when a plot of land in the exclusive Peak district sold for $233 million, or about $8,700 a square foot.

The price is a record high for luxury land in Hong Kong, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The buyer was Lee Shau-kee, who controls the Henderson Land Development Co. Shau-kee expects to build three or four houses on the site, which is known as Falconridge, his son told reporters.

Indonesia may soon allow foreign investors to purchase property, according to published reports.

“The government is committed to continuously comb through policies to make it easier to invest in Indonesia,” Gita Wirjawan, chairman of the Investment Coordination Board of Indonesia, said during a conference next week.

New regulations that might go into affect by this summer would allow foreign direct ownership of both residential and commercial property, Wirjawan said.