1. Austria: Prominent Vienna Hotel Goes Into Receivership
Creditors of Vienna-based real estate and retail investment group Signa have agreed to a plan to transfer assets held by its divisions Signa Prime Selection and Signa Development Selection into receivership. Several commercial properties including the 146-room Park Hyatt Vienna hotel are expected to be sold off by a court-appointed receiver over the next two to five years.
The process stems from a November 2023 bankruptcy filing by Signa in a German court amid recent financial struggles and is intended to avoid an immediate fire sale of affected properties as its finances are restructured. The Park Hyatt, among Vienna’s most prominent upscale hotels, opened in June 2014 and remains in operation by Hyatt Hotels.
2. UK: Pharmaceutical Giant Leases Big Office Space Near London
Property owner Legal & General Investment Management signed global pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson for one of the London region’s largest office leasings in recent years, a deal for 97,000 square feet in the Thames Valley area.
Sources said the American maker of medical treatments and technologies has agreed to take the remaining space across three floors in the 130,000-square-foot Tempo Maidenhead office building, which is nearing completion. It was unclear which of the company’s operations will move to the new development, but Johnson & Johnson has seven existing locations in the United Kingdom.
3. Germany: Country’s Largest Commercial Property Investor Posts Loss
Aroundtown, Germany’s largest listed commercial real estate investment firm, reported a loss of €2.47 billion for 2023, compared with earnings of €360 million in the prior year, citing significant portfolio value write-downs in a challenging investment climate.
Company officials said its overall portfolio value had to be written down 11% or €3.2 billion for 2023, prompting Aroundtown to suspend its dividend distribution for the year. The company said market conditions of the past year contributed to a 21% drop in the declared value of its ongoing project developments and a decline of 12% for its office properties, while hotels were written down the least at 6%.
4. France: Prime Mixed-Use Complex Placed Up for Sale
A prominent mixed-use complex in a key business district of Marseille, France, has been placed up for sale by owner Amundi Immobilier.
Sources said brokers at CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield have been hired to market the office and retail complex known as Les Docks, which was acquired by the current owner from JP Morgan Asset Management in 2017 and has been the focus of planned redevelopments over the past decade. Amundi expects to sell the property for around €265 million, higher than its €231 million purchase price.
5. Canada: Short-Term Rental Owners Face Hefty Tax To Extend Leases
Owners of Canada’s roughly 235,000 short-term rental units face a daunting obstacle if they choose to rent those units as traditional apartments, as a little-known tax rule obliges them to pay a levy of up to 15% of the value of each unit to rent it for long periods.
Short-term rental property owners switching from short-term to long-term rental must pay the goods and sales tax as well as the provincial, or harmonized, sales tax on the fair market value of the property at the time it first gets rented for a longer term, the Canada Revenue Agency confirmed to CoStar News. The rules come as all levels of government have urged operators of short-term rentals to instead make their properties available as long-term rentals to combat a nationwide housing shortage.
6. US: Tax Appeals Expected Over Gap Between Office Values, Assessments
Office owners across the country, coping with more vacancies and lower demand that reduce building values, now face another issue: higher property tax bills.
Property tax appeals are hitting local assessment officials as the chasm widens between what an office building is now worth based on its potential rental income versus the value determined by an assessor. That divide is expected to not only compound challenges for landlords looking to refinance their loans, but also to signal trouble ahead for governments relying on revenue generated by property taxes, according to industry analysts.
This report was compiled from CoStar’s news publications in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France and Germany.