Global real estate at a turning point

THE AGENDA

Among the highlights of the Reuters Summit in Singapore will be a rare interview with Ngee Huat Seek, head of GIC Real Estate, the property arm of Singapore's Government Investment Corporation, which has investments across the globe, as well as executives from prominent players in China -- Hong Kong's Cheung Kong (Holdings) and Singapore developer CapitaLand Ltd.

On the agenda in Europe are interviews with leading property companies Land Securities, IVG Immobilien, Brixton, Hammerson, and Metrovacesa, with the region's newer REIT regimes under pressure to perform as property returns slow in the UK and potential predators circle overhead.

Discussions on the state of real estate investment banking, property derivatives, and corporate sale and leasebacks with key industry figures are also scheduled.

In the United States, it is a tale of two industries, with housing in decline due to excessive supply and a meltdown in subprime mortgage lending, which has prompted an otherwise healthy commercial real estate industry to tighten up its lending practices. It has also placed a spotlight on the apartment sector, which may face increased competition from single-family houses and condominiums, whose owners are unable to sell them and instead rent them out.

Among those speaking in New York are the heads of Bank of America's consumer real estate business, Centerline Capital Group, home builders Toll Brothers and Hovnanian Enterprises, and Jones Lang LaSalle.

Data last month from property services firm CB Richard Ellis showed year-on-year double-digit percentage gains in office rents in at least 50 major cities across the world.

Private rival Cushman & Wakefield also said the total value of property transactions in Europe was on course for another record year above $320 billion, after bumper first quarter data.

However, a few signs of stress have surfaced as central banks around the world catch up with a U.S. rate-tightening campaign initiated 3 years ago. And the squeeze on debt-funded property investment has accelerated in recent weeks as markets have raised their expectations for global economic growth and yields on government bonds have soared.

(Additional reporting by Dominic Whiting in Hong Kong and Ilaina Jonas in New York)