Singapore emerged as the largest Asian investor of overseas property, spending US$11.9 billion in such assets last year from US$9.4 billion during 2013, revealed CBRE.
The city-state maintained its position as the top source of outbound capital in the region, followed by China with US$10.1 billion and Hong Kong (US$6.3 billion). Malaysia and Taiwan trail behind with US$1.7 billion and US$0.2 billion respectively.
“Singaporean investors looked offshore as a result of compressed yields in their home market and a shortage of investible assets, while Chinese outbound growth was in particular driven by the emergence of new sources of real estate capital, particularly insurers as they sought to increase their allocation to real estate under more relaxed rules,” said Ada Choi, Senior Director at CBRE Research Asia.
“We also saw Chinese property developers increasingly active in international markets. Alongside more direct investment, more experienced Asian institutional investors from places such as Korea and Japan are increasingly gaining exposure via indirect funds and club deals. Established sources of capital such as these will continue to grow, but the emergence of sources of new capital such as the Chinese and Taiwanese insurance companies will make a significant mark on global real estate markets in the coming years.”
In total, Asian outbound property investments increased 23 percent to US$40 billion in 2014 from the year before.
Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) received the biggest share of capital as Asian investors pumped US$13.7 billion into the region last year. Asia took US$12 billion, while Americas and Pacific got US$8.9 billion and US$5.2 billion respectively.
Source: CBRE
CBRE data shows Asians prefer to invest in London, which recorded 17 percent of total capital. Tokyo (9.0 percent), Sydney (5.0 percent), Shanghai (4.0 percent) and New York (4.0 percent) complete the top five investment cities.
By asset type, 54 percent of overall investment went to office properties, 16 percent to hotels and 11 percent to retail assets. The rest went to industrial real estate (7.0 percent), residential properties (5.0 percent) and mixed assets (5.0 percent).
Image: London skyline
Nikki De Guzman, Editor at CommercialGuru, wrote this story. To contact her about this or other stories email nikki@propertyguru.com.sg
