London Property Show a great success including Florida Pavillion

Article posted October 2, 2012

 

A Place in the Sun Live closed its doors on Sunday after three days that exceeded all expectations. An audience of 4,390 provided exhibitors with more visitors per stand than at any time during the last four years and the quality of these visitors appears exceptional.

Packed seminar theatres with standing room only for many sessions and a main stage area full of serious buyers created an exciting atmosphere. Exhibitors reported genuine interest with visitors eager for information, booking inspection trips and ready to move forward and buy.

Chris White of Ideal Homes Portugal said, “Our target for three days of the show was to arrange ten buyers to fly out to the Algarve on viewing trips – we achieved this by the end of day one.”

Bob Shepherd of Euro Prestige was equally impressed: “It was packed at the NEC this weekend. There was a constant stream of genuine clients on the stands and what surprised us all was the distance people travelled to attend – a compliment to the show marketing. Agents who weren’t at A Place in the Sun Live have certainly missed out.”

Marc Pritchard of Taylor Wimpey was clear: “simply put, the best show in years” while Martin Copeland of Knight Knox was “delighted to have made sales on every day of the show”. Said Peter Birkett of Property Repossessions Spain: “This has been the best show for years. Something definitely changed in the market six months ago and at this event we couldn’t cope with the number of visitors to our stand at times.”

Andy Bridge of A Place in the Sun commented: “It was clear that visitors were more serious than they have been for a long time. I’d like to say we did something dramatically different for this show but the truth is there are more people ready to buy now. Maybe they are fed up with a recession that is not going away, maybe they believe the market has finally bottomed out, but either way it’s very welcome news for our exhibitors. The new series of the TV show filmed earlier this year and broadcasting this month will help show the nation just what incredible offers exist in the overseas property market right now.”

The audience was hungry for information on Spain in particular but other traditional destinations proved popular too. The French Village was as busy as usual as was the Florida Pavilion, and both the Portuguese and Italian Pavilions were full of visitors at all the seminars and presentations. Exhibitors from Turkey reported running out of promotional materials and the relatively small number of stands for Cyprus all had a successful show.

Dates for the next A Place in the Sun Live are 12th – 14th April 2013 at London Olympia.

Full Press release see

http://www.globaledge.co.uk/news/press-release-a-place-in-the-sun-live-48632

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Facebook expands to 1bn users October 2012.

Facebook expands to 1bn users October 2012.
Facebook now has 600m users accessing the site via a mobile device, compared with 552m
just 4 Months ago!

Read full article from FT:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6694b79e-0e21-11e2-8b92-00144feabdc0.html#

The Era of global ownership dawns.

October 2, 2012  FT
Era of global ownership dawns.  By Ed Hammond

The freewheeling “develop first, ask questions later” years that defined the past decade are long gone, replaced by a new financial sobriety. The global banking system, having lent so freely, is awash with trillions of dollars of real estate debt; much of which it will have to sell.

Two distinct categories of investor have emerged as the new front runners in global property. “There are those who are relatively risk-averse – these would be sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and private investors; and those who embrace risk – US opportunity funds, local property companies, and private trader/developers.”

The long-term, risk-averse investors are attracted to the perceived safety of London, New York, Hong Kong and Paris, says Mr Hope. Property values in the large, world cities typically operate in vacuums, unencumbered by the difficulties of their respective domestic markets. “Those that are risk embracing, meanwhile, are looking to buy at the bottom; they are interested in buying distressed properties that will provide capital growth.”

Cash-rich entrants to the property market have started to self-finance development in the hope of taking advantage of the lack of new supply. On the other, a new breed of financial institution has begun making tentative forays into real estate lending.
Global insurance groups Axa, Met Life, Aviva and Legal & General have launched programmes for providing debt finance to property companies. And specialist mezzanine and stretched senior debt funds have sprung up to try to cash in on the gap created by the shortfall in bank lending.
Even in the residential property market – long the territory of traditional lenders – new sources of capital are appearing.
Robert Hodges, managing director at Carlyle, the US private equity group. says: “The reason the market for residential looks interesting at the moment is that there is a gap in the capital structure that has been left by the banks withdrawing finance. That has created an opportunity for new types of investors, such as private equity funds.
“The demand profile is looking very good and, even though there are a lot more players coming to market, supply is still constrained,” he adds.

Full Article see Financial Times:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4b1aeca8-0661-11e2-bd29-00144feabdc0.html#axzz28M4ZzuQg

Euro hits two-week high at $ 1.30 on ECB rate hold

Euro hits two-week high on ECB rate hold - FT.com

The euro hit its highest level in nearly two weeks after the European Central Bank kept interest rates on hold at 0.75 per cent and said that it had not discussed a rate cut this month.

The single currency rose 0.9 per cent to reach $1.3020.  Details via Financial Times Article:

 

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/45d711b2-0e05-11e2-8d92-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=published_links%2Frss%2Fworld_europe%2Ffeed%2F%2Fproduct#axzz28M4ZzuQg