Singapore Among Top 3 Asia Pacific Property Investment Locations
SINGAPORE – M&G Real Estate has named Australia, Japan, and Singapore as the top property investment destinations in Asia Pacific for 2022 thanks to their promising recovery prospects, reported Mingtiandi on Wednesday evening (12 January, SGT).
In particular, the UK-based asset manager plans to focus on logistics, office, and residential properties in the aforementioned target markets.
Within Southeast Asia, Singapore’s favourable environment for innovation is expected to continue to lure tech companies this year, said Eunice Khoo, Manager of the Asia research team at M&G Real Estate, at a virtual briefing on Tuesday.
Khoo pointed out that the republic has emerged as a sough-after headquarters location for multinational tech firms partly thanks to the country’s commitment to innovation.
In fact, this tech-centric approach is now reaping benefits. In 2019, M&G Real Estate invested S$400 million (then US$295 million) to forward fund Surbana Jurong’s new office campus in Singapore’s Jurong Innovation District, which will house Surbana Jurong’s new headquarters when it is finished this year.
In 2020, China’s Tencent Holdings also opened its first Singapore office, while American e-commerce giant Amazon expanded into a new 3-storey office in Marina Bay in late-2021.
Additionally, Khoo revealed that Australia’s office market is poised for a cyclical recovery. In September, the company acquired a 50 percent interest in the 35-storey EY Centre at 200 George Street in Sydney for A$577 million (then US$421million).
Meanwhile, robust demand for properties in Japan’s major cities is expected to drive growth in the second biggest economy in Asia.
Although M&G Real Estate maintains a “cautiously optimistic” economic outlook for Asia Pacific in 2022, it believes that higher vaccination rates would allow office and retail properties to benefit from the return of employees and foot traffic, even though the region continues to grapple with COVID-19.
