Large price tag, small apartment
In a study comparing the 2010 prices of 120-square-meter apartments across 92 cities, Beirut came in highest in the Arab world, and 33rd overall. That’s a steep rise from 52nd place in 2009. As a study on property investment, the Global Property guide looked at high-end apartments in selected areas of the world’s cities that are available for resale. The study collected prices of apartments in Ashrafieh, Verdun, Ramlet El Baida and the downtown district, among others. The study placed Beirut and Tel Aviv at the top of the Middle East and North Africa region for their price-to-rent ratio, or the number of years required for rent paid to equal the property’s sales price. Up from 24 years in 2009, it now takes and average of 30 years.
Squatters’ scuffle
Albert Abela, a Lebanese man living in London and chairman of Abela Group, most famous for its worldwide catering services, successfully evicted a group of 30 European squatters from his £10 million ($15.9 million) mansion in Highgate, London on January 17, according to British daily The London Evening Standard. Abela, who has not lived in the house “for a long time” according to one neighbor, commissioned a private company who used 22 officers to remove the squatters after obtaining a court order on the morning of the eviction. The last squatter to leave, 21-year-old Jason Ruddick, revealed that he had traveled 1,500 miles specifically to live in the 10-bedroom mansion, staying there since Boxing Day. In a bizarre confrontation with bailiffs, he discussed the group’s plans to squat in another abandoned home. A neighbor said, “I can’t understand how someone could let a property that expensive just sit empty… if people need a home I don’t mind all that much.”
Political upheaval shakes share prices
The resignation of 11 ministers and collapse of the government on January 12 sent investors on the Beirut Stock Exchange scrambling, with the bourses’ largest publicly traded company and Lebanon’s biggest construction company, Solidere, seeing its “A” shares tumble 8.2 percent to $18.73 and “B” shares slide 6.7 percent to $18.72, according to data from Bloomberg. The shares slipped further as tension in the country mounted over the next week. Following Parliament’s election of the new Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the cessation of demonstrations around the country by supporters of the former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, share prices rebounded, with Solidere “A” shares closing at $19.96 and “B” shares at “20.02” as of going to print.
New stars for Starwood
It’s going to be a busy five years for Starwood Hotels & Resorts. The group, which operates 50 hotels throughout the region, plans to open another 25 hotels in the Middle East by 2015, making the area its prime focus after North America. Ten will be in the United Arab Emirates, which is already home to 20 Starwood hotels. The New York-based operator said that the president, chief executive officer, chief financial officer and other executives are currently touring the Middle East and will sign five deals this month to open new hotels. Currently on the agenda are new hotels in Muscat, Amman and the emirates of Sharjah and Ajman. The UAE construction firm Al Habtoor group, which owns four hotels in Dubai and two in Lebanon, said in a January 17 press release that its CEO, Mohamad al-Habtoor, held meetings with the top leadership of Starwood Hotels & Resorts. Despite the fact that his company is still waiting on payments of around $1.1 billion for projects that have been complete, the chairman of Al Habtoor Group has plans to build the largest hotel in the UAE, which will have approximately 2,000 rooms.
Eco education expansion
Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Institute of Science and Technology has selected Arabian Construction Company (ACC) to take up the second phase of construction on its campus expansion plan, which means the Lebanese firm will be in charge of building student dorms, labs and conference areas for a price of $204 million. Company director Hamed Mikati told Gulf News on January 9 that Aldar Properties, based in Abu Dhabi, will manage the project, which would take about a year and half to complete and will enlarge the campus size by 35 percent by adding 82,000 square meters. He said, “We are taking sustainable building practices and the reduction of embodied carbon into account and look forward to being a part of the future of green construction.”
Failed bid to buy out the occupiers
Palestinian-American businessman Bashar Masri was beaten by Israeli supermarket tycoon Rami Levy in a bid to buy out a bankrupt Israeli real estate company Digal Investments & Holding, which is building a housing project in East Jerusalem. Masri offered $36 million to buy all shares in Digal and half the shares in another company that is building a hotel on the plot. Masri had said he wanted to sell the more than 300 units to Palestinians. Levy told Israel National News TV that the opportunity to take over the project was an attractive one, both from a financial and ideological perspective, with 90 homes already built and 300 more planned. “There is no reason why Jews should not live there,” Levy said. Digal completed nearly a quarter of the 400 residences, which they planned to sell only to Jews, but later ran into debt problems when slow sales ensued. Masri told the Los Angeles Times in a January 12 article that the sale “sends the wrong message that if you are of Arab background you will be treated differently from someone with an Israeli background. It is not good for your business if you claim to be a free-market economy.”
Jeweled property
The Boghossian Foundation, founded by the Armenian family of the same name, has opened the Villa Empain in Brussels to art aficionados. The previously run-down villa has been refurnished with textiles and art for gallery showings. Opened in November and running until February, the exhibition shows off a range of Ottoman relics. Jewelers Jean and Albert Boghossian, who fled Beirut during the civil war in the 1970s and are now based in Geneva and Antwerp, purchased the property in 2006 as a new headquarters for their foundation before opening it to the public in April of 2010. Global Post describes the family as having “rescued” the villa, which had fallen into disrepair and was once used as a Nazi headquarters.
Five-star Kurdistan
Beirut-based Malia group, partnering with Italian company DIVA, opened the Erbil Rotana Hotel, the first five-star hotel in the Iraqi region of Kurdistan in late December, according to Byblos Bank’s January report. The hotel, built at a cost of around $55 million, sits on 20,000 square meters of land and offers 201 guest rooms. Founded in Lebanon in 1936, Malia Group now operates in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and some parts of Europe. They had been active in the Kurdistan construction industry before starting work on the hotel, which had been scheduled to open in 2009.
