Real Estate Procurement Opportunities in Canada and England

With the ongoing political turmoil and the sad incident that is sending fear in the hearts of many in London, including the prime central London (PCL) housing market, England is still a great place for investing according to Christie’s International Real Estate’s head.

CEO of Christie’s International Real Estate, Dan Conn, said earlier on; “The U.K. market will always be a strong market…you have a depressed currency…soft prices and low transaction volumes. So it’s true supply is lower, people have taken properties off the market but I think the U.K. is a great buying opportunity.” He also added; “There are also pockets of Canada that I think are great buying opportunities…London, Vancouver, Toronto, these are all great places to live – you don’t get away from that dynamic.”

Conn has a negative outlook in the luxury market in UK, because of the weakness it has shown in the past, with the volumes being low for about a decade now, as outlined by Dan.

The performance of the PCL’s market has been sloping from last year as a result of the stamp changes in duty in the United Kingdom which has now been mostly absorbed, the same goes for Vancouver in Canada, which introduced a 15 per cent tax for foreign buyers and Hong Kong, where prices were affected for some time by taxes. Toronto has experienced an inflation in the prices of properties, it also happens to be the city next in line to have a go with such measures.

Christie gave an explanation about Hong Kong’s rebound; “If you’re in mainland China and you’re thinking about where to deploy your capital, you have to find a safe place to invest. The policies that you’re seeing from a number of governments in what were attractive target markets are not so foreign investor friendly. So part of it is just trying to find a safe place for capital and part of it is a currency hedge.”