new quarter starting, page-8

You might want to top up sooner than later PWU, interesting real estate article here.

" LONDON (Reuters) - Munich is the most attractive European city for real estate investors, helped by its resilient economic and business structure, beating out last year's favourite London, a report said on Monday.

LaSalle Investment Management said its annual European Regional Economic Growth (E-REGI) index showed the German city can best withstand the current economic turmoil, due to strong wealth levels and diversified local and global businesses.

The index, which ranks 98 cities in Europe for property investments, showed London falling to eighth spot behind rivals such as Paris, Stockholm and Moscow, due to weak GDP and employment growth expectations in the British capital, LaSalle said.

"Recent figures indicate that European commercial real estate investment volumes are stabilising and we expect to see the cities we have identified in our 2009 index to be among the first to benefit from an increase in demand," LaSalle co-head for Europe Simon Marrison said.

In a separate report, Prupim, the real estate investment arm of insurer Prudential (PRU.L: Quote, Profile, Research), said 52 percent of over 200 UK institutional pension funds it surveyed plan to raise their commercial property investment exposure between now and 2012.

The rising appetite for global real estate among these investors is due to the relative cheapness of the asset class compared with other alternatives, and the bargains available for cash-rich institutional buyers, Prupim said.

(Reporting by Daryl Loo; editing by Simon Jessop)"


http://in.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idINIndia-42761720090928