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China’s real estate crisis could threaten growth into 2022. Beijing’s undeterred
The country’s GDP grew at its slowest pace in a year last quarter, expanding just 4.9% from a year earlier. Compared to the prior quarter, the economy grew a mere 0.2% in the July-to-September period — one of the weakest quarters since China started releasing such records in 2011. Disruptions due to the global shipping crisis and a massive energy crunch contributed to the slowdown. Shipping delays and mounting inventories in China have hit smaller manufacturers that are now hurting for cash, resulting in lost orders and production cuts. And factory output has been dented in large part because of power shortages, a result of high demand for fossil fuel…
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‘Horrific for the community’: confessions of a real estate agent in priced-out Byron Bay | Travis Lipshus
When I started working as an agent in Byron Bay in late 2016, the median house price was sitting at around $1.1m and rapidly increasing with the spillover from the Sydney property boom. Everyone was in awe. Two years before, it had been half that, as regional Australian property values were beginning to recover from the GFC. From 2016 until last year’s lockdown ended, Byron Bay had averaged 74 home sales annually, and the line on the graphs keeps going up, slowing and ebbing every now and then. As of August 2021 the median house price is $2.55m, with a 70% increase in a year. If you owned property before…
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Kanye West’s Real Estate Taste Is Pretty Questionable, TBH
Everyone’s a critic. Kanye West, himself famously opinionated, has been the subject of much recent social media jawing as fans take his new YEEZY hoodies and sneakers to task. Weirdly, his architectural taste has proven to be uncontroversially well-received. I don’t entirely understand why. Don’t misunderstand: whoever’s doing Kanye’s interior design knows what’s up. No, I’m more at odds with the recent goings-ons of Kanye’s real estate portfolio. For one, that new 4,000 sq.ft Malibu home he just acquired: much love to Tadao Ando but the $57.3 million that Kanye coughed up for this bomb shelter is just out of pocket. It’s pretty enough, especially with that woodsy furniture, but…
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Real estate ‘unicorn’ Orchard Technologies moving downtown
Orchard Technologies, a newly minted “unicorn” that aims to simplify the home-selling-and-buying process, had its own odyssey finding a new home for its fast-growing business. The outcome: a welcome, 107,000 square-foot boost for the downtown office market. The four-year-old firm was working out of a 25,000-square-foot Knotel flex-space until Knotel went bankrupt early this year. Orchard relocated temporarily to a WeWork location on West 14th Street, but needed much more elbow room for its growing staff. Now, it’s signed a lease on three floors at L&L Holding Company’s 195 Broadway, the landmarked “wedding-cake” tower between Fulton and Dey streets. Ironically, part of Orchard’s new space was originally built out for Knotel, which…
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Inside the billionaire battle for real estate supremacy on Meadow Lane
Even billionaires have to keep up with the Joneses — and they’re spending the GDPs of small nations to do it. Last year — during the uncertainty of the pandemic — the superrich clung to the Hamptons like a toddler with a security blanket. But one salubrious Southampton street saw more outrageous spending than ever before: Meadow Lane. Consisting of roughly 100 homes (more than half of them head-turning mega-mansions), the narrow two-lane street runs from the tip of Southampton’s barrier island, all the way to the ultra-exclusive, members-only joint, the Meadow Club. Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, at least 11 of those homes, roughly 10%,…
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Jordan King Abdullah II Says $100M in Real Estate Purchased Quietly Over Security Concerns
Jordan’s King Abdullah II said his purchases of reportedly more than $100 million worth of real estate were kept quiet due to security concerns for himself and his family. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released the Pandora Papers on Sunday, which reported that hundreds of world leaders, celebrities, religious leaders, drug dealers and others have been hiding investments in real estate and other assets over the past 25 years. Abdullah denied doing anything wrong by purchasing the properties, saying they were kept quiet over security concerns. He also said the properties were used for official functions. “These properties are not publicized out of security and privacy concerns, and not…
