Malaysian real estate investment firm Pavilion REIT Management plans to purchase two hotels in Kuala Lumpur for a total of 480 million Malaysian ringgit or $108.5 million, as it increases its property holdings in the country’s capital city.

The company said it entered into a conditional agreement to acquire the 55-room Banyan Tree Kuala Lumpur and the 325-room Pavilion Hotel Kuala Lumpur. The sellers of the hotels, both opened in 2018, are Lumayan Indah Sdn Bhd and Harmoni Perkasa Sdn Bhd, both based in Malaysia.

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Investment firm Landsec completed its acquisition of a 92% stake in Liverpool One, among the United Kingdom’s premier shopping centers, in a landmark £490 million transaction.

In a stock market announcement confirming the deal previously reported by CoStar News, Landsec said it acquired 69% of its new stake from a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and 23% from investment firm Grosvenor. Landsec said the Liverpool center’s rental income is “expected to grow meaningfully in the coming years” as the real estate investment trust seeks to grow its investments in major retail destinations.

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Investment firms Global Student Accommodation and Nuveen Real Estate plan to acquire a French student housing portfolio in a transaction valued at €567 million, the companies announced.

The joint venture said it signed a purchase agreement with the seller, investment firm Gecina, to acquire 18 current buildings with nearly 3,300 beds, and another four properties under development with about 400 beds that are scheduled for completion in 2025. Sources said the portfolio, with buildings located near several French university campuses, also attracted interest from rival prospective buyers that included Brookfield and Greystar. 

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A group of bidders led by developer Dieter Becken was granted exclusivity to purchase and complete a large office tower project in Hamburg, Germany, left unfinished by the defunct Signa Group after it filed for insolvency amid financial struggles. Financial terms are still to be finalized, but Becken has plans to finish the tower and include a natural history museum on its lower floors.

As part of a process similar to U.S. bankruptcy, an insolvency administrator selected the group to finish what was planned to be a 250-meter-high office building called Elbtower. Work stopped about a year ago after Signa stopped paying a commissioned construction contractor, leaving a 100-meter-high hull of the unfinished tower standing to the east of an urban development zone near the Elbe river.

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Vancouver’s big plan to add tens of thousands of housing units and create a second downtown along the city’s Broadway corridor has just gotten bigger, as cities across Canada seek to boost the supply of affordable residences.

The Vancouver city council approved amendments that would add 41,500 housing units to Vancouver's Broadway Plan — up from the 30,000 approved in 2022 — and remove height limits for some transit-oriented projects across many of the 500 city blocks covered by the plan. The council’s update doubles down on its aggressive plan passed in June 2022 designed to provide a framework for the area’s growth along the corridor over the next 30 years. 

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Amazon Web Services is upping the ante on its data center investments in Ohio as the cloud computing provider seeks to meet soaring demand for digital infrastructure and applications powered by artificial intelligence.

The Amazon subsidiary is increasing its planned investment in the state through 2030 by $10 billion to $23.8 billion, it said in a statement. That represents a 72% increase from the $13.8 billion AWS had previously budgeted. Ohio has one of the fastest-growing data center sectors in the United States, with Google, Meta, Microsoft and DBT all developing centers totaling multiple billions of dollars in investment value.

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This report was compiled from CoStar’s news publications in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France and Germany.