The Dubai Metro will be officially inaugurated on September 9th and is expected to increase the values of nearby properties. Though growth has slowed in the emirate recently, it is still expanding rapidly. Residents and visitors will be able to get around the city and emirate much easier with the new, modern Metro Line.   The Metro’s Red Line will be the first to open and will have 10 stations when it...

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Luxury chalet company Descent has gone into liquidation, following several smaller companies including Ski All America and Indigo Lodges. Descent began operating in 1997 and offered high-end accommodations for holiday travelers and vacationers in France and Switzerland. It was known for having some of the nicest properties available for skiers and travelers in the Alps, with private homes that ranged from...

Although the overall housing and real estate market in Thailand has been slowed this year, the demand for luxury villas in Phuket has remained steady. The popular holiday destination in Thailand has seen transactions for luxury villas hit Bt3.5 billion in the first half of 2009, according to a report from consultants C9 Hotelworks.   Demand for luxury villas for the remainder of 2009 will probably remain...

Germany’s famed port city of Hamburg is transforming the face of its Harburg Harbor into a world class eco city development. The area is being transformed from an industrial site that housed shipbuilders and factories into a new urban area that has sustainable design and practices at its heart. The first phase of the project is complete and commercial tenants began moving in earlier this...

The UK’s second largest city Birmingham is well below the average house price in the UK and seems to be out of step with other regions showing steady house price increases. Land registry figures show that Birmingham average house price was £139,146 whilst UK average is £224,064   The figures on the face of it may make grim reading for property market in Birmingham but according to Hometrack overall...

The Algarve Tourism Board (ERTA) is working hard to increase the quality of visitors’ experiences, according to the new president, Dr. Nuno Aires. In an interview with the Algarve Resident Newspaper, Dr. Nuno Aires stressed the importance of having a destination that visitors want to return to again and again.   “It is vital to invest in training in the tourist sector in order for the Algarve to stand...

Sales of residential real estate in Finland peaked in mid 2008 and fell for several quarters, but have now started to pick up again. According to Statistics Finland, a government agency, prices for housing rose in the second quarter of 2009 by 2.3 percent in Helsinki and 5.8 percent overall from the first quarter of the year. That leaves current housing prices only 3.3 percent lower than they were at their...

New home sales in the United States rose by 9.6 percent in July, the fourth straight month of gains. The US Commerce Department released its latest report and indicated that sales rose to an annually adjusted rate of 433,000 from an upwardly revised June figure of 395,000. That is the strongest pace since September of 2008 and came in above many analyst’s predictions.   For the month of July, there were...

New home sales in France increased sharply during the second quarter of 2009, according to the latest figures from the French government. Approximately 28,000 new homes were sold from April through June, an increase of 29.7 percent over the same period in 2008.   The rise in sales has been spurred by zero-interest loans and tax breaks offered by the government. State secretary for housing Benoist Apparu...