Report: Ananda Krishnan, foreign buyers jacking up London property prices
(Malay Mail Online) – Malaysia’s second-richest man Tan Sri T. Ananda Krishnan is among an elite group of some 10 foreign investors who are buying up large swathes of property in London and pushing up prices beyond the reach of local Britons, The Guardian reported.
According to a report in the UK daily yesterday, the Malaysian billionaire’s main business holding, Usaha Tegas Group, has sent in plans to build 104 luxury homes on land that previously housed the St John’s Wood barracks.
The proposed apartment units are expected to sell for up to £5m (RM37 million) each, with the detached mansions containing seven bedrooms on the same site carrying a higher price tag though the report did not mention a sum.
According to The Guardian, sites for close to 30,000 homes in the UK capital city are owned by just 10 investors from Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, Australia, Singapore and Sweden, sparking concern from British politicians and housing industry experts that Londoners won’t be afford their own homes.
Citing its local lawmakers and property gurus, the daily reported many of the new London developments are being treated as “safe deposit boxes” for its international investors instead of being owned by locals whom it said were dire need of housing.
“The capital will not be sustainable unless people in the public services can afford to live here. We are pricing them out,” Lewisham Deptford MP Joan Ruddock was quoted saying by The Guardian, urging the city to tighten controls on property.
Hong Kong-listed conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa is currently behind plans for 3,500 homes in Ruddock’s constituency, according to the news report.
The report, citing data provided by Molior London, a research house on residential development, said plans for more than 21,000 homes in central London are being developed by investors from Malaysia, mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore.
From 2012 to 2014 alone, Asian investment in all kinds of central London property doubled to outstrip UK investment, accounting for more than a quarter of the £21b (RM114 billion) that went into the area, according to Savills real estate firm, as reported by The Guardian.
The report also noted that Malaysia’s Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Minister Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan was chosen to launch the latest phase of homes at the revamped Battersea Power Station in November and a new space named Malaysia square as “pivotal role of foreign governments” in London’s housing market.
Richard Blakeway, London’s deputy mayor for housing, land and property, said mayor Boris Johnson had “challenged” the foreign developers to commit to making new homes available to Londoners to buy before or alongside overseas buyers.
Oliver Wainwright is The Guardian‘s architecture and design critic wrote that London authorities and the mayor’s planning team “must have the strength to enforce their own plans, or else be trampled by the supercharged bulldozer of international capital, leaving an empty city in its wake”.
