Singapore, Hong Kong Among Top Investors In US Commercial Properties
USA – Data from CoStar showed that entities from China, Singapore, and Hong Kong were the most active buyers of commercial real estate across the country for the first six months of 2023, reported the commercial property information provider on Monday morning (17 October, SGT).
As a matter of fact, CoStar said the three groups made up over 70 percent of the commercial real estate acquisitions during H1 2023.
But in the third quarter, foreign investors divested more US commercial properties than they purchased by around US$1.3 billion. And this has only occurred three times during the prior 22 quarters.
Aside from that, American office buildings accounted for 19 percent of the purchases by offshore investors for the first three quarters of the year. This is far below the 28 percent annual average in the last five years.
Meanwhile, a survey of non-US investors by the Association for International Real Estate Investors (AFIRE) revealed that most respondents expect values of office buildings to fall the most in metropolitan Washington DC and New York, followed by Atlanta, Boston and Miami.
Also, 30 percent of the surveyed offshore investors are projecting that values would fall by over 10 percent across the broad US office market.
Furthermore, about 90 percent of the respondents expect that they would convert some existing office assets in the United States to residential properties over the next five years.
“While significant uncertainties persist, institutional investors, who benefit from a long-term horizon, see opportunity to realign their portfolios to meet the shift in asset class demands, in particular towards the continued need for a greater volume of residential properties in US cities,” remarked AFIRE’s Chief Executive Gunnar Branson.
