Results tagged “realestate”

We love pirates. Eyepatches, peg legs, swashbuckling- you name it, we love it. We even have a soft spot for the Somali pirates, because somewhere deep inside of us, we know that they're keeping the dream alive. Of course, these days it's pretty hard to be a pirate, and it's not as glamorous a lifestyle as it once was. Times have gotten hard: valuable cargo now has military escorts, or avoid the Gulf of Aden altogether. Heck, even Dolphins are getting in the way of your business.

• This is pretty damn cool: Two Iranians are reshuffling scenes from Persepolis, a black comedy cartoon by Iranian-French emigre Marjane Satrapi, into a story about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed victory. Where are they working from? GOOD OLD SHANGHAI. Check out the comic here. [AFP]
• The average price of commercial residential houses in Shanghai reached 19,603 yuan per square meter last week. Anybody got a house to sell? Now seems like the time. [People's Daily]
• The Book Fair was wildly successful this week - about 240,000 people visited, buying 28 million yuan worth of books. [Shanghai Daily]

• Barack Obama and Bill Gates endorse real estate in Xi'an [Danwei] "The developer erected four giant 10x6m billboards around the building, each displaying the portrait of one "spokesperson" coupled with a quote in English and Chinese. In the Obama sign, the quote of choice is 'The values upon which our success depends have never changed,' a slight adaptation from a line in his inaugural address: 'Our challenges may be new....but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old'."
• Red tape to test transsexuals' desire [Eastday] "It was revealed last month officials at the Ministry of Health plan to set clear criteria for people who qualify for the surgery, as well as the hospitals and staff allowed to carry it out. Some in the transgender community, however, have raised concerns the new rules could be too strict [...] His fears center on the fact that, if the rules are approved, patients will have to prove they have had the desire to swap their gender for at least five years, and have lived full-time as their chosen gender for two years."
• A Virtual Game to Teach Children Languages [NYTimes Bits Blog] "Kids choose an avatar and pick a scene, like a castle in a fantasy land or a supermarket in the United States. They are confronted with challenges, like dodging flying monsters or buying fruit, all of which ask them to use English. If they hit a ceiling in their language capabilities, they go to the wizards’ library and read so-called magical books that teach them lessons. The company is initially focusing on kids age 7 to 12 in China but plans to expand globally, eventually teaching many different languages to kids all over the world."

Porn shoot? Nope. Actually, this was a photography competition hosted by a real estate company in Hubei. The photographer's mission, if they chose to accept it, was to take a great picture of a (very naked) human figure on pieces of property the company had up for sale. And accept it they did... in droves. Over 100 pervy photogs showed up to snap pics... we're betting not all of them made it to public collections.

Another day, another real estate dispute in Shanghai. This time around, it's residents in the Dong Cheng Community in Pudong fighting against the company that built their compound, according to this BBS thread on Sohu.

We've heard of some barking mad methods to throw renters out on the street, but this particular incident is really boneheaded. A developer in Taiyuan, the capital of Shaanxi Province, unleashed dogs on its tenants and put some of them in a dog cage because they did not move out of their house on time.

• Lest we have those twin luxury towers (which were to hold the Conrad Hilton) rot in the middle of the city, the Shanghai government is now trying to orchestrate a buyout of the stalled project. [WSJ]
• Thanks to the Expo, wait times are going to be slashed to 4 minutes or less on the No. 7 subway line. We just have to wait til next year before it goes into effect. [Shanghai Daily]
• Foreign firms are allowed to list on the Shanghai stock exchange for the first time ever in an attempt to turn the city into a financial center like New York or London. [Telegraph]

• Probe into collective air ticket price hike urged [China Daily] “Chinese consumer-right groups and law scholars Friday urged authorities to investigate into a collective price hikes by major airlines, which they suspected to be a violation of the Anti-monopoly Law. The Beijing Consumers Association, the Beijing Consumer Protection Law Society, the Beijing society on industry and business administration and the civil and commercial laws research center under the Beijing-based Renmin University expressed their concern over the controversial price hikes in a joint statement. "The pricing mechanism agreed by domestic airliners has led to an average rise of 10 percent in price of air tickets."

     

The bigger unit, measuring in at 26,400 square meters, cost its new owner 205 million RMB (roughly $30 million US). The smaller one was had for a bargain of 115 million RMB.

Ex-Pudong Vice Governor Kang Huijun, who allegedly accepted nearly 6 million yuan in bribes, has been sentenced to life in prison. Kang, who became known as “Pudong's landlord,” was arrested in 2007. Besides the bribes, he and his wife, Wang Xiaoyin, also illegally owned 11 million yuan worth of property. Wang has been given a five-year term and about 18 million yuan of the couples' net worth has been repossessed by the government. Caijing published a great summary of what Kang and Wang did leading up to their arrest.

File this under "Only in China". This report by Melissa Chan of Al-Jazeera has intrigued us with how Chinese buyers are now banding together to shop for apartments so as to bargain for better prices with developers. The practise, known as tuan gou (团购) or 'group purchases', has long been used to buy anything from apparel to household items, but this really is the first time we've heard of apartment buyers using the same tactic. And apparently, the practise is growing.

Photo from Chad Ingraham: Has the Shanghai real estate market reached its peak?

As Jake Newby told you in our previous post:

With backing from a live Icelandic brass section (the ingeniously named Wonderbrass), songs such as the horn heavy ‘Wanderlust’ demonstrated Björk’s gift for spectacle and her incredible delivery, before she closed out the set with the anthemic ‘Declare Independence’, chanting the name of a huge piece of real estate west of Sichuan and Yunnan amongst a hail of streamers.

Having soft-opened since February 9th, Lawry's the Prime Rib is ready to put on its best face for Shanghai's beef lovers beginning with its grand opening tomorrow. Shanghaiist was able to do some preview dining and we were left with one distinct impression: this place takes its prime rib traditions very seriously.

Xinhua: British PM visits Shanghai

• Gothamist went to the scene of the Trump Soho construction collapse, which left one construction worker dead and others injured (an indirect culprit - Manhattan's hot real estate market, causing rushed construction jobs).
• Shanghaiist is confused by media reports as to whether Playboy will be available in China during the year of the Olympics.
• LAist got fugged in an interview with the Go Fug Yourself girls.

DONGPING ROAD: DOOMED OR REDISCOVERED? As some readers may know, the strip of Dongping Road on the south side from Hengshan to Yueyang Roads is leased to the bars, restaurants, tailors etc by the music college behind them. Most of the leases are coming up for renewal over the next 2-12 months.There has been some concern that the music college may decide to reclaim their land for their own expansion purposes, rather than renew the...

We went to opening night last Thursday and were able to get a sneak peek into the 1933 building mentioned a few posts back, where some of the exhibitions were still being touched up at the last minute. One of the purposes of the SICIW is to bring together art and design entities from all over the world into one place, perhaps fomenting future collaboration and connection. From Shanghai Daily:

On Friday, the People’s Bank of China raised mortgage interest rate and hiked minimum down payment needed for purchasing investment and commercial properties. In a joint announcement with China Banking Regulatory Commission, the PBoC said

How should a government combat runaway inflation? Most sensible economists would suggest a series of tightening monetary and fiscal policies to realign the aggregate supply demand picture. Well, China has raised interest rate four times this year, twice last month, to no avail. Prices, at both the producer and retail levels continue to bubble up, as do asset prices, such as the real estate and the equity market.

The Aluminum Company of America, better known as ALCOA sold its entire 7 percent stake in its largest Chinese counterpart, Aluminum Company of China, or CHALCO for short (ALCOC just doesn’t quite have the same pizzazz, not to mention potentially misleading). ALCOA acquired the Chalco stake for roughly USD $200 million back in 2001 when the Chinese firm went public in Hong Kong. And six years later, the same stake just exchanged hands for 10 times the value, USD$2 billion. 25 major institutions were reported buyers, and just to be nice, ALCOA priced the shares at 15 percent below market, how very generous!

Number 3 Baoqing Rd, at the corner of Huaihai Rd near the Changshu Rd metro station, is an old colonial-style house with almost 4000 square meters of attached private gardens. For 55 years, award-winning and state-honored Shanghai painter Xu Yuanzhang and his family have lived in this house, upkeeping the house and gardens that his grandfather Zhou Zongliang purchased from a German owner seven years after it was built in Shanghai's booming 1930's.

Thou shalt not collude on pricing, the regulatory god said unto the Moses of industries in most countries, including China. But the instant noodle cabal either did not hear it or turned a deaf ear. In late July, noodle makers joined forces in raising prices by about 20 percent, and as much as 40 percent for some products.After less than three weeks of regulatory pressure, media assailing and public discontent, the industry backed down, apologized and initiated an across-the-board price cut. Is this a triumph of consumer rights and regulatory protection? Yes ... hmm maybe.

Continue reading "Thou shalt not collude on pricing, says China Daily columnist but fails to hit out at state-owned airlines"

At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognise automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity.

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We’re sure everyone has forgotten due to a lack of media coverage, however, Shanghai will be hosting the 2010 World Expo. In order to prepare for Shanghai’s debut on the world stage, several construction projects are underway. After all, Shanghai has to upstage former World Expo hosts, such as Knoxville in the US, Hanover in Germany, Aichi Prefecture in Japan, and the main rival, the 2008 host Zaragoza, Spain.

The western media just can't get enough of Thames Town. A few months ago, we headed out there hoping that we would get some fish and chips, but after walking about all we saw were couples getting married amid the backdrop of merry old England. There was a mention of a "grocery store" in Thames Town in the report—last time we went there, we indeed found a grocery store, you know, the one called Lawson's—but maybe there have been some changes since the first (and last) time we went there, several months ago.