HONG KONG: Lower than expected sales of apartments in Cheung Kong Festival City in Tai Wai have raised concerns that price gains in the primary market may be outstripping the budgets of homebuyers.

"It is a sign that prices are close to their peak," David Ng, head of regional property research at the Royal Bank of Scotland, said.

HONG KONG: Buying a burial plot may not be on the top of one's shopping list, but it can be a sound investment in China.

In areas near big cities such as Shanghai, where land is scarce, prices of burial plots have been rising about 10% per year over the past few years, according to Marcy Zhang, the managing director of Shanghai-based Crispins Property Investment Management.

KUALA LUMPUR: Cuepacs has urged the government to reduce the interest rate on housing loans from 4% to 2% in keeping with the market rates.

Its secretary-general, Ahmad Shah Mohd Zin, said many commercial banks were charging less than 4% and the government should also adjust the rates, which were first introduced in the early 70s.

KUALA LUMPUR: The government is mulling the idea of sharing part of the profit from the eventual sale of land along newly built expressways with the concessionaires, said Works Minister Datuk Shaziman Abu Mansor.

Such a move would help to lighten the concessionaires’ cost burden and the intensity of toll hikes, the minister said.

ABU DHABI: Harrods Estates, the luxury real estate division of the Harrods Group, will showcase its prime residential property portfolio in Central London at the Cityscape Abu Dhabi 2010, an international real estate investment and development event to be held from April 18 to 21.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Asia market is being flooded with numerous green ratings and this is confusing tenants and developers, the Clinton Foundation's Clinton Climate Initiative energy efficiency building retrofit programme regional manager (Asia) Christopher Seeley said in a panel discussion in the session entitled "Going green - technologies/buildings" at the Asian Metrocity Summit here on April 6

KUALA TERENGGANU: The case on the collapse of the Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin Stadium's roof structure on June 2 last year has been handed over to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) for investigation.

KUALA LUMPUR: All bus services to the north and the south that are now operating from the Puduraya Terminal will move to a temporary terminal at Bukit Jalil (Parking Lot F) besides the hockey stadium beginning April 12.

According to the acting manager of corporate communications of Uda Holdings

Tunku Putra Badlishah (centre) and Anne (right) at the signing of the MoU
between SDP and Cisco

MUKAH: Sarawak's Land and Survey Information System (LASIS) has attracted the interest of authorities in Australia and Morroco.

Land and Survey Department's director Datuk Sudarsono Osman said he would be going to Sydney in Australia soon and Morroco by next year to give briefings on the integrated and comprehensive land administration system developed in the state.