Good morning, talking about never going back, just about 16 years ago, in mid–January 2006, the first Intel powered Macintosh computers reached the store.
Fast forward to the present, and Apple is on its way to fully ditch the semiconductor giant in favour of its home-grown chips.
The more things change, the more they…change, and China's real estate experts vehemently agree, as you will find out in the last blurb.
Enjoy your morning.
😷↔1 metre↔😷
2021: Warehouse Leasing Up By A Third
With ecommerce diverting a lot of brick-and-mortar retail traffic back to the bedroom, demand for warehousing and industrial real estate estate is on the uptick.
Yeah? Got Some Numbers?
Per Savills India, driven by higher demand from third-party logistics and e-commerce players:
📌 Industrial and warehouse space leasing across eight major cities went up by 35% in 2021 to 35.1 million sq. ft. - up from 26 million sq. ft. in 2020.
📌 Fresh supply of industrial and warehouse real estate also went up by 64% to 36 million sq. ft. from 22 million sq. ft. in 2020.
📌 Among the major cities, Delhi-NCR led with the highest absorption in 2021 at 8.1 million sq. ft., followed by Pune at 6.5 million sq. ft.
Who Needs All That Space?
Third-party logistics (3PL) companies and e-commerce players continued to drive warehousing demand, accounting for 62% of the total absorption in 2021, followed by the manufacturing sector at 14%.
Looking Ahead?
🎙 "Continued interest in this asset class was due to its growth potential and stable returns. The market is likely to witness continued and growing interest from investors in this asset class in 2022 as well," per the Savills report.
Arriving In Style
Sharjah-based real estate developer Arada just bought the last beachfront plot on the crescent of The Palm Jumeirah for Dh240 million (USD65m) to announce its entry into the Dubai property market.
The developer plans to build a mixed-use project on the 20,500-square-metre plot.
Design work on Arada’s mixed-use project on Palm Jumeirah, comprising residential, leisure and food and beverage components, is underway and sales are expected to begin in Q3, 2022, per this report.
Just An Undersea Volcano Erupting Guys
🤯
An underwater volcano erupted in the Pacific Ocean on Saturday, raining ash on the nearby nation of Tonga and triggering tsunami alarms from Japan to California.
What Really Happened: The volcanic eruption was mega—equivalent to a magnitude 5.8 earthquake, releasing a plume of ash thousands of feet in the air, and generating a sonic boom that could be heard nearly 6,000 miles away in Alaska.
The eruption's effect on New Zealand and the West Coast of the US was limited but due to the ash, Tonga looks “like a moonscape,” locals told the BBC.
While no deaths have been reported there, the damage to Tonga is “significant,” said New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern.
⚠ Knocked-out communication and internet lines have made it difficult to reach some of Tonga’s 105,000 residents.
Our prayers go out to each one of them. 🙏
GIF: CIRA via the Twitter account @US_StormWatch
What's Up With China's Real Estate Sector?
Every morning, one of China's many large real estate firms is in the news, and not for happy reasons.
What's Going On?
Construction and finishing of new homes makes up almost 25% of China’s economy, per The New York Times.
Through the last 20 years, easy debt and rampant speculation have helped China build the equivalent of 140 sq. ft. of new housing for every urban resident.
But come H2, 2021 and China's real estate balked under financial pressure.
Big Brands Are Sweating
The Evergrande Group is merely the largest and most visible of an ever growing list of real estate developers in China that are facing extreme financial difficulty lately.
Kaisa Group, China Aoyuan Property Group and Fantasia are among other prominent builders that have struggled to make payments as bond investors become more wary of lending money to China’s real estate sector.
Demand Is Sinking
And that's setting off a chain reaction in the economy. As real estate developers try to conserve cash, they are starting fewer construction projects, creating a big problem for the economy.
The price of steel reinforcing bars for the concrete in apartment towers, for example, dropped by 25% in October - November before stabilizing at a much lower level in December.
On the flip side, the drop in home prices in smaller cities has hurt the value of people’s assets, which has eroded their confidence in real estate investments.
Even in Shanghai and Beijing, apartment prices are no longer surging, a complete trend reversal from what is happening with housing prices across the world.
Is There A Quick Fix?
Yes. By returning to the era of lavish lending by China's state-controlled banks, feel some experts. Others say the policies may be loosened, but there can be no return to the past.
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Flyfish Club just announced it’s coming to Manhattan early next year as the world’s “first NFT restaurant.”
How does it work? You need to be an owner of a Flyfish digital token to partake of the “globally inspired” seafood menu; and another, more exclusive token will get you into a special omakase room.
Chai on email. Sushi in the metaverse. Change is good. 💚
☕ The Crew@Ginger Chai