Answers to critical questions about buildings and earthquakes

The attached document is an easy read that answers some of the following questions;

  1. What controls building design and construction?
  2. How do earthquakes damage buildings?
  3. What is an earthquake prone building?
  4. Given that a building has been through one earthquake, how do we know how much of its ‘earthquake life’ has been used up?
  5. What are some low cost methods of improving earthquake safety?
Please feel free to distribute this to anyone of interest.

‘Perfect storm’ for overseas investment in New Zealand

‘Perfect storm’ for overseas investment in New Zealand business and real estate

New Zealand’s safe food-chain supply, a pending multi-billion dollar investment by the Chinese Government, and an overheated Australian property market are three key factors behind a rise in demand for New Zealand real estate assets by off-shore investors.

The ‘perfect storm’ of global social and economic conditions has arisen – totally independent from each other – from three separate global locations, and comes at a time when New Zealanders are becoming increasingly open to potential sale of domestic assets and land on the international market.

In response to requests from vendors to take Kiwi property marketing offshore, leading New Zealand real estate company Bayleys is compiling a portfolio of commercial premises, businesses, residential homes, and primary production land for sale to take on an extensive roadshow to South-East Asia, Europe and the UK.

Properties and businesses already participating in the Bayleys Global portfolio include tourism and hospitality ventures in Taranaki, the West Coast, and Central Otago, a farm in North Canterbury, two vineyards in Marlborough, a retirement village in Counties just south of Auckland, and residential homes in Auckland, Queenstown, Taranaki and Northland.

Bayleys principal David Bayley said the company had traditionally focused on UK immigrants to spearhead its Northern Hemisphere marketing activity. However, events of the past three months had created a new set of dynamics and opportunities – with demand following suit.

He said, ‘new generation’ factors were now underpinning the increasing interest in New Zealand real estate and businesses. Among those factors were:

Global financial Bible, The Economist, last month identifying the Australian residential property market as the most overvalued in the world – with the bubble estimated to be overinflated to the tune of 56 percent. On the back of a continuing iron-and steel mining and production boom across the Tasman, property market commentators have been tracking double-digit growth in residential and commercial property values over the past three years while the rest of the world, apart from China, has been in recession. With Australian residential and commercial property market values benefitting from nearby Asian investment, real estate analysts believe it is only a matter of time until large scale profit-taking sell-offs commence in Australia… and the resulting funds begin heading to New Zealand to take advantage of a favourable exchange rate. China’s enormous sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corporation, setting aside NZ$6 billion of its massive foreign exchange reserves to invest in New Zealand assets – including commercial buildings, companies and primary productions units such as farms and vineyards. Growing safe food-chain supply concerns following the suspected irradiation of primary produce from Northern Japan after the March earthquake – which resulted in the World Health Organisation placing meat, leafy vegetables, eggs and milk produced in the region on a ‘danger list’.

Those safe food-chain supply concerns were further exacerbated this month with an outbreak of the killer e-coli virus across Europe which was traced back to vegetables contaminated by polluted water. Both instances dovetail behind the 2008 Sanlu melamine milk powder scandal in China, which saw some 10,000 tonnes of infant milk powder recalled off supermarket shelves.

Mr Bayley said each of the demand factors on their own were significant.

“Combined however, they are enormous,” he said.

“New Zealand’s challenge now is to balance a controlled exchange of farms, commercial properties, home and businesses ownership in such a way that the best interests of the country are retained in the long-term, while the multi-billion investment opportunities we are now facing are used to continue in assisting to lifting New Zealand out of recession.

“Controls and measures for this are contained within Overseas Investment Office guidelines.

“In full compliance with OIO guidelines, properties featuring in our international portfolio are being simultaneously marketed extensively throughout New Zealand – giving New Zealanders every equal opportunity to buy.”

Mr Bayley said the Government’s internationalist policy of seeking investment in the New Zealand economy would assist in the company’s marketing drive. Properties for the international marketing campaign are currently being signed up – with some 26 already confirmed.

Bayleys’ international roadshow across immigration expo’s and property investment seminars begins in Zurich, Switzerland, on July 6 before taking on dates Leeds, London and Manchester. Company principal David Bayley is handling the South-East Asian section of the Bayleys Global campaign – with a promotional trip to Shanghai, Guangzhou, Singapore and Hong Kong scheduled for August.

Source:  Press Release – Bayleys

Sue Collis totally embraces Findspace

Sue Collis Commercial has been an ardent supporter of Findspace ever since the site started and Sue went out of her own to start her own Commercial Real Estate company.

Her website utilizes our ClientSpace feature whereby we push all her listings from Findspace back to her website in realtime.  This uses iFrame technology and means Sue does not have to worry about developing her own listing capability on her website, saving her heaps in development costs.

Sue Collis Commercial lists all their listings on Findspace in preference to other sites for three main reasons,

  1. It is available to all users (not restricted to just Real Estate Agents)
  2. Our search engine, SpaceFinder, lets potential clients search over 30 variables meaning when she gets an enquiry she knows it is not a tyre kicker, and
  3. It is totally cost effective with individual listings plans and subscriptions available.

If you wish to achieve the same success as Sue Collis then you should have your listings on Findspace.

Auto Delete changed to 28 Days

We have just updated our code that controls the auto-delete of listings.  The reason we do this is to ensure there are no stale listings left sitting on our database which is something other websites do in order to improve rankings.  They have no idea of the frustration this causes users when they click on a link only to find the listings is no longer available and/or it has long since been tenanted.

All our listings Expire every 28 days and now you have a further 28 days in order to renew your listing after which they are automatically deleted.  This has been reduced from 50 days as we are ending up with too many listings just sitting on our database that are not renewed.

New Viewing Stats in E-mail

We have just added Viewing Stats to the e-mail that we send out when a listing expires.  This will give you valuable feedback that your properties are getting viewed on Findspace.

You will now find a figure for:

  • Total views since the listing was added
  • Number of views since the last renewal date
If you find there has been few views then you should review your listing and consider adding extra detail or going to one of the more visible plans.  When adding a listing the system generates a Quality Score for the amount of content you have added.  The higher the score the greater the chance your listing will be viewed more often.

Tenanted Investment category added

We have just added a new category called Tenanted Investment.

This is for any type of listing that is fully tenanted and offered for sale.

You can find them under the OTHER section.

Data Sort options now added

Very soon the number of listings on Findspace should double as three large Real Estate agencies will be feeding their data through to us.

Although we feel the SpaceFinder search tool can pretty will cover most bases, we have been asked for the option to sort the data once defined.

We have now added the ability to sort all data by:

  • Sale Only
  • Lease Only
  • Latest Listings First
  • Recently Updated
  • Lowest Lease Price (based on m2)
  • Highest Lease Price (based on m2)
  • Smallest Floor Area (based on total floor area)
  • Largest Floor Area (based on total floor area)
You will find these sort options by clicking on any of the the five main sections and when viewing the results of a Search.

    Auckland offices vacant as capital feels the squeeze

    New Zealand’s largest office space investor sees a stark contrast in our two largest cities, with a shortage of prime space in Wellington as its new Auckland building lies almost empty.

    AMP NZ Office Trust, which owns $1.3 billion in prime office space in Wellington and Auckland, reported a 12 per cent rise in distributable profits to $47 million for the nine months to March 31 yesterday.

    Chief executive Rob Lang said despite the backdrop of a weak economy, the trust’s occupancy level in the capital was at 98.6 per cent, with demand from businesses for more…….

    Read the full article here > http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/3618624/Auckland-offices-vacant-as-capital-feels-the-squeeze

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