Commercial Investment Real Estate September/October 2019 | Page 44

INTERNATIONAL
B E AT
Blackstone Group LP acquired two office towers in Sydney’s central business district
for $1.04 billion. The deal is Blackstone’s biggest in Australia. The buildings were
acquired from Scentre Group, which owns shopping centers in Australia and New
Zealand. Scentre developed the towers in 2011 and will retain ownership of its
Westfield Sydney Mall and Sydney Tower in the complex. Blackstone will be granted
a 299-year leasehold for the office towers. Scentre will use part of the proceeds to
fund an $800 million Australian share buyback.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Source: BNP Paribas
Real Estate
Vacancy
Rate
5.8%
Rent Range
(square meters
/month)
$2.78-$5.94
Too Many Tourists?
The tourism industry is booming; in 2018, tourism and travel generated
$8.8 trillion in revenue and accounted for 10.4 percent of global
activity. However, this growth has come with a price. JLL reports
that many areas in southeast Asia and Europe are looking for ways to
cope with “overtourism.” One island in the Philippines, for example,
was closed to tourists for six months in 2018 in order to clean up
damage from an excessive number of tourists, and new guidelines
issued in December limit the daily number of arriving tourists to 6,400.
New city-center hotel construction has been banned in Barcelona and
Reykjavik, Iceland, while Bali now collects a $10 tourist tax to help
preserve the environment.
The total stock of the warehouse and logistics sector in Poland grew by
more than 40 percent over the last two years. The trend looks to continue,
although the 1Q2019 vacancy rate rose
slightly and growing
construction costs still
Total
affect rental levels.
Under
Stock
Construction
Delivered
23.1 million sf
5.45 million sf
Ready for the Worst
Cushman & Wakefield’s Prepped Cities Index measures a
city’s ability to create a safe environment in eight different
areas, including cybersecurity, terrorism, susceptibility to
natural disasters, and sustainability. Focused on the office
sector, the index examines both the built environment
and governmental planning and preparedness. The best-
prepped cities in the world:
Amsterdam
Beijing
Chicago
Melbourne
San Francisco
Shanghai
Singapore
Sydney
Tokyo
Washington, D.C.
Poland Warehouse Stock Grows
Global Markets to Watch The World Economic Forum’s report, “Making Affordable
Housing a Reality in Cities,” released in June, highlighted difficulties in the global struggle to provide sufficient affordable
housing. Recent studies estimate 330 million urban households are in substandard dwellings or are financially
challenged by housing costs. More than half of Africans live in substandard conditions, while one in four in China and
India live in informal dwellings. By 2025, as many as 1.6 billion may face such challenges.
Source: World Economic Forum
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September | October 2019
Sydney’s Big Deal
COMMERCIAL INVESTMENT REAL ESTATE