(Bloomberg) — A historic shift in how Swedish property firms fund themselves was already underway before a little-known private company revealed a $10.7 billion acquisition that will put the trend firmly on the map.
Heimstaden Bostad AB — owned by Ivar Tollefsen’s Fredensborg AS and pension funds — says it will use debt capital markets to refinance a jumbo bridge facility for the largest ever private property transaction in the Nordic region.
The deal highlights a shift by real estate companies in the biggest Nordic economy into both bonds and euros. The trend is driven by a quantitative easing-fueled property boom that’s allowing companies to raise more money than is available in the local market.
“The real estate sector has grown so much because companies have replaced secured bank financing with unsecured bond financing,” said Max Berger at DWS Investment GmBH. More broadly, Europe’s property industry has become “the fastest growing in euro investment grade in the last couple of years.”
Since 2010, the number of real estate issuers in the euro investment grade market has increased to 69 from five, according to Berger, who manages 6 billion euros ($7 billion) of bonds. Euros have now overtaken Swedish krona as the main funding currency for outstanding bonds sold by the country’s property companies.
Heimstaden Bostad’s bridge loan “will clearly be refinanced mainly in euro bonds,” said Anders Holmlund, head of bond origination at Svenska Handelsbanken. The banker adds that the domestic krona market “isn’t a realistic alternative” given the short time frame.
The boom in real estate bonds can be seen in its dominance of the Swedish central bank’s balance sheet, where more than half of the Riksbank’s corporate bond holdings come from property companies.
The European Central Bank’s bond-buying program is adding further fuel to the market, according to Holmlund.
And the broader buyer base is allowing Swedish property companies to expand massively. Samhallsbyggnadsbolaget i Norden AB, for example, announced a plan recently to nearly triple its property portfolio size to 300 billion kronor ($34.4 billion) by 2026.
“We will focus more on euro in the future,” Marika Dimming, a spokesperson, said in an interview. “It’s a natural progression for us,” she said, adding that “the trend is also to set up a subsidiary in the euro area so that the bonds can be bought by the ECB in their QE program,” she said.
But a summer rally in Swedish house prices, warnings of excessive valuations in share prices and concerns about a withdrawal of central bank stimulus have stoked concern among politicians and analysts alike.
Equity analysts at Svenska Handelsbanken said they have “a clear negative tilt towards the sector universe,” citing “disturbances in the increasingly important capital markets” triggered by QE tapering as a possible downside catalyst.
Still, euro bond investors are attracted to Swedish residential firms’ risk-return profile compared with western European office companies, said DWS’s Berger.
“Nordic players have provided us with interesting sub-sectors that have defensive characteristics, but trade in line with the wider sector,” the Frankfurt-based portfolio manager said, adding that sub-sector selection within real estate is key to making profitable investments.
“The pandemic has been a good stress test for real estate companies’ balance sheets,” he said. “Even hotel and retail focused companies have weathered the pandemic.”
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
