Newsday (New York)
9 February 2009
The schools authority of a suburb of New York City is planning to buy an office building in Westbury on the grounds that a purchase will be cheaper than paying rent. Nassau County’s Board of Co-operative Education Services is seeking voter permission to spend $16.25m on the one-storey building and up to $2m in debt-service fees. BOCES estimates that the office’s rent and taxes would cost $46.25m over 20 years under the lease, but that costs would drop to no more than $25.95m if the building were purchased.
Australian Financial Review
10 February 2009
Research by Savills indicates that tenant incentives have risen to an average of 21.25% of rent Australia-wide. Rob Dickins, of Savills, notes that 20% of the lease is sufficient to cover fit-out costs. GHD is said to have secured a 34% incentive on a lease in Castlereagh Street in Sydney.
The Business Times (Singapore)
10 February 2009
The government of Singapore’s industrial development corporation, JTC, will temporarily lift its 50% subletting cap to help companies cope with the economic downturn. Revealing the move in parliament, senior minister of state for trade and industry S Iswaran agreed with MPs that the move would boost companies’ cashflows. JTC will thus lift the cap until 31 December 2011. Yesterday’s move is on top of 5-10% rent cuts JTC made last month.
Irish Times
10 February 2009
Two businessmen from Dublin and an investment company are facing court proceedings brought by some 56 private Irish investors seeking the return of more than ¤8m, allegedly paid to fund a property investment in Ukraine since found to have defective legal title. Yesterday, the Commercial Court in Dublin heard that investors intend to sue Peter Haydon and Aidan Corless as well as Haydon (Private Clients) Ltd, trading as Haydon Investments Company (HIC), to get their money back. It is claimed the defendants spent more than ¤5.2m of investors’ money to acquire a property in Kiev, Ukraine, but the defendants ultimately acquired only defective title to the property. One investor, Thomas Meyler, said he believed the original investment fund of ¤9.7m had reduced to some ¤3.4m without the investors having acquired any assets, as the Ukraine property was bought with a title since declared flawed.
