1. Australia: Tropical City Prepares for New Hotel Investment
Rising tourism and commercial development have Australia’s northeastern state of Queensland preparing for new hotel investment, with visitors drawn to tropical cities like Cairns for access to the Great Barrier Reef and World Heritage Daintree Wilderness.
Analysts said investors have taken notice of rising demand amid low hotel supply in Cairns, located about 1,200 miles north of Sydney. Three notable hotel property sales were closed or pending this year in Cairns, with some operators relaunching or rebranding existing older properties.
2. UK: JP Morgan Plans London Office Overhaul
JP Morgan Global Alternatives, the alternative investment arm of JP Morgan Asset Management, has submitted plans for a major renovation and expansion of more than 800,000 square feet of office and retail space at Bishops Square and the adjoining Spitalfields Market in London. JP Morgan officials said the expansion would make the complex among the largest of its kind in Europe.
Filings show the project calls for expanding while retaining original elements of the current office building owned by JP Morgan, which would re-branded as One Spitalfields, creating a new public access route from Bishops Square to the heart of the market. The finished project would include 870,000 square feet of office and retail space, with 70,000 square feet of new terracing, targeted for completion in 2030.
3. France: BNP Paribas Looks To Acquire Global Investment Firm
Financial services firm BNP Paribas entered into exclusive negotiations to potentially buy AXA Investment Managers, a subsidiary of global investment management firm AXA, in a massive transaction that could be completed in summer 2025.
Sources said BNP Paribas, based in Paris, would pay about €5.1 billion or roughly $5.6 billion in cash, and the deal when completed would take BNP Paribas’ assets under management to around €1.5 billion. The AXA subsidiary has about €859 million in assets under management, while BNP Paribas has around €865 million, meaning the total value of BNP holdings including real estate would nearly double with an acquisition.
4. Germany: Investors Halt Decline in Real Estate Prices
A downward trend in Germany’s real estate sales prices appears to have ended after nearly two years of declines, according to new industry data.
A closely watched index, based on transaction data from 700 mortgage banks compiled by the Association of German Pfandbrief Banks trade group, rose 0.5% in the second quarter compared to the previous quarter. For the first time since the second quarter of 2022, residential property prices did not fall quarter-on-quarter, but rather rose by 0.5%. Retail property sales prices rose 0.7% from the prior quarter, besting the 0.3% improvement for offices, though prices for all tracked property categories were down from the second quarter of 2023.
5. Canada: Pace of Apartment Rent Hikes Slows
The pace of rental apartment rate increases appears to be slowing, according to new data that includes the latest earnings results from InterRent REIT, which owns about 13,000 units and reported that rent growth “maybe peaked a couple of quarters ago.”
Asking rents for all residential property types in Canada were up 5.9% from a year earlier to a monthly average of $2,201 in July, but the increase was the smallest in 31 months, according to Rentals.ca and Urbanation’s latest National Rent Report. “As we move past the peak of summer, we've seen very little of the uplift typically expected with the warmer months,” Rentals.ca senior analyst David Aizikov said in a published commentary.
6. US: Federal Government Plans Major Cuts to DC Office Space
The U.S. federal government, after shedding more than 30 million square feet from its national office portfolio, is preparing to make deeper cuts with plans to let several leases lapse and consolidate its workforce in greater Washington, D.C.
The General Services Administration, the government’s manager of real estate, expects to reduce space across multiple agencies as part of a decade-long effort to offload extraneous space and save hundreds of millions in property expenses. The latest plans include shrinking office space occupied by the Department of State, Department of Housing and Urban Development and some Treasury Department agencies, according to an update issued this month by the White House.
This report was compiled from CoStar’s news publications in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France and Germany.