Bookmark & Share
Singapore emerged as the second biggest Asian investor in international real estate in the first half of 2017, behind China, revealed CBRE.
Singapore-based property companies, institutional investors and private equity firms injected US$6.8 billion in global real estate, up 20 percent from the previous year and a little more than half of the total tally for the whole of 2016 (US$12.7 billion).
Top destinations for Singapore capital during the period include the United States (US$2.4 billion), China (US$1.2 billion) and Australia (US$635 million).
Despite heightened regulation, China remained the region’s largest outbound investor in real estate, with total capital deployment at US$25.6 billion.
Overall, Asian outbound investment into offshore real estate for the first half of 2017 increased 98.4 percent to US$45.2 billion, from US$22.8 billion over the same period last year.
“Singapore investors are poised to become major beneficiaries of heightened China capital controls,” said Yvonne Siew, executive director for global capital markets, Asia Pacific at CBRE.
“With the anticipated slowdown of outbound Chinese capital, Singapore investors have shown clear signs that they are both capitalised and confident enough to pursue outbound targets to both diversify portfolios and offset a competitive domestic landscape.”
On 18 August, China’s State Council and National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) issued a new round of capital controls, which focused on offshore real estate investments.
CBRE, however, does not expect the regulatory move to affect the medium to longer term appetite of Chinese investors for outbound investment.
“Our data shows that China remained the largest source of cross-border commercial real estate investment capital (both new and capital already circulating offshore) from Asia in H1 2017,” said Robert Fong, director of research at CBRE Asia Pacific.
“New regulations should help to ensure that future outbound investment is more financially sound and strategically focused, but the impact of Chinese capital on key global real estate markets should continue for some time.”
Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact him about this or other stories, email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg
Related Articles:
Ascendas-Singbridge acquires Sydney building for A$252mil