Asset Management Center

Tenant enquiries and site visits rebounded in May following the further relaxation of COVID-19 controls. Mainland China remained the lone exception.

Demand for traditional space is being negatively impacted by mainland China’s anti-pandemic measures and a rising number of downsizing enquiries. However, India and Australia saw robust new set up and expansion demand.

Pressure for higher incentives remained weak, particularly in Australia. Rents continued to recover, led by cities in India.

Sentiment in most markets improved as the bulk of markets in the region continued to shift away from being tenant-favoured. Mainland China was among the weakest performers.

This report was originally published in https://apacresearch.cbre.com/en/research-and-reports/Asia-Pacific-Market-Sentiment-Survey—June-2022

Bolstered by increasing biotech investments and accelerating healthcare research, the biomedical sciences (BMS) industry has experienced strong growth in recent years, further reinforcing Singapore’s position as a leading biomedical science hub at the heart of Asia.

This report provides an overview of Singapore’s BMS industry and its real estate requirements with the focus on key drivers for the industry, demand, future supply and rentals of life science properties.

Take-up in the region’s warehouse markets remained robust in the second half of 2021, lifted by resurgent trade flows from the recovery in global demand. As a result, rents for logistics warehouses across Asia-Pacific rose by a marginal 0.5% year-on-year in the same period. Despite close to 9 million sqm of new supply expected to be delivered in the region in 2022, vacancies are likely to remain tight on strong demand and active pre-commitments.

Although substantial questions remain about the future of the workplace, it is becoming increasingly clear that a focus on the office as the sole place where work is done is no longer applicable and that there is actually an ecosystem of workplaces.

Facilities Management (FM) needs to adapt and evolve accordingly. There are already changes in the way corporate offices are managed; that transformative approach will need to continue and soon expand to also consider locations that not the office. 

From our collective experience across the globe – best practices developed through trial & error, solutions we have implemented for clients, data collected and analysed – we identify what has significantly changed, what emerging trends we see, and what’s next within facilities management across three core areas: 

• health and safety; 
• technology and innovation; and
• culture and experience. 

• By April 2021, office-focused listed real estate companies became the worst-performing segment in the MSCI World Core IMI Real Estate Index, on a cumulative basis since January 2020.
• Office’s relatively poor recent performance upset the pattern of returns — across regions and public and private markets — seen in 2020, when industrial outperformed, retail and hotels lagged and office and residential had middling returns.
• Private-market data has not shown such a shift in sector-performance rankings but, looking deeper, we can see the performance of office assets has varied by location type and lease structure.

The commercialisation of the property management industry in China started in 1981 with the incorporation of China’s first property management company managing a residential property in Shenzhen. In the subsequent ten years, residential property management continued to mature with the eventual establishment of the Shenzhen Real Estate Management Bureau in 1985. One of the first Grade A office buildings to be professionally managed was the Guangzhou World Trade Centre in 1992, where it was co-managed by Savills and Guangzhou Pearl River Hotel Management. In the early days of property management in China, the sector remained immensely scattered and only basic property management services were provided. The China Property Management Association was eventually established in 2000, with the first nationwide property management regulations issued in 2003. As the property management sector continued to grow, local governments set standards for the market, requiring firms to obtain operation licenses and setting residential property management fee caps.

The industry started to undergo greater liberalisation in 2014-2016, with property managers no longer required to obtain the national ‘Certified Property Manager’ qualification license and commodity housing management fees caps removed and instead set by market forces. In more recent years, property managers have started providing value-added services (VAS) to boost revenues and profit margins. At the same time, many developers have spun off property management divisions in separate listings, with many of them given the mandate to aggressively expand market share, often through mergers and acquisitions. The property management industry is now also taking on a broader range of property types. In addition to the more standard commercial and residential developments, firms are be contracted for work at schools, hospitals, airports, sports stadiums and public utilities, to name just a few.

The Development Bureau of the HKSAR Government recently announced a pilot scheme which standardizes land premium calculations for old industrial buildings undergoing redevelopment to other specific uses. We welcome the new scheme as it provides clarity for investment decisions, significant time and cost savings, and encourages more efficient land use to address social needs. Old industrial buildings that sits on Residential or Comprehensive Development Area (CDA) zoning will be most sought after following the implementation of the scheme.