Rising Sun, Rising Returns: Japan’s Strategic Edge in a Volatile Global Economy
As global economic headwinds reshape capital flows, Japan has emerged as a top destination for cross-border investment in 2025. A convergence of macroeconomic trends, structural reforms, and favourable policy dynamics is solidifying Japan’s status as a strategic anchor amid global uncertainty. Despite rising global interest rates, Japan has maintained a positive yield spread across all major real estate sectors, making it particularly attractive to institutional investors seeking income stability.
Cushman & Wakefield’s What Occupiers Want 2025, in collaboration with CoreNet Global, presents findings from over 235 global CRE leaders, offering a timely perspective on evolving workplace strategies, investment priorities, and the future of office space.
Key insights include:
Cost remains king, continuing to drive real estate decisions across regions.
Reporting lines are shifting, with nearly 30% of CRE teams now reporting into HR—reflecting growing alignment with people and culture agendas.
Flexible hiring takes hold, as 61% of occupiers adopt geographically flexible recruitment strategies.
Portfolios are stabilizing, with a decline in planned reductions and rising occupancy levels.
Expectations from landlords are growing, with 85% of occupiers seeking enhanced amenities—and 46% willing to pay a premium.
A call for better metrics: CRE leaders are urged to adopt holistic frameworks that link workplace decisions to business performance.
The Evolution of Hotel Brands in Asia Pacific: Why it Matters (CBRE)
The global hotel industry is in a period of brand consolidation, with the world’s leading operators continuing to expand their footprint through new developments and brand strategies.
With hotel brand penetration still relatively low compared to the U.S. and Europe, Asia Pacific has become a key growth market.
CBRE Research estimates that 74% of Asia Pacific hotel supply between now and 2030 is aligned with one of the top 8 listed hotel companies – a significant increase over the currently operational market share of 18%.
Our latest report analyses the current state of the hotel brand landscape, and explores the brand strategies that owners and operators are pursuing to adapt to ever-changing market dynamics.
Overall: We maintain a cautiously optimistic view on Asian REITs, supported by falling interest rates across Asia ex-Japan, which enable lower financing costs and open the door for accretive acquisitions. Singapore exemplifies this trend, with Capitaland Ascendas acquiring assets at attractive cap rates using low-cost debt and equity raised at a premium to NAV.
Regional Highlights:
Japan: JREITs have outperformed equities in 2025 despite rising bond yields, driven by wide valuation discounts and buybacks. While refinancing at higher rates is a headwind, rental growth from expiring COVID-era leases and strong fundamentals in office, hotel, and urban retail sectors provide earnings support. JREITs are preferred over developers at this stage.
Australia: Ex-Goodman, REITs have rallied with names like Charter Hall and Mirvac seeing strong gains. Valuations are now full in some names, prompting rotation to undervalued plays like National Storage REIT, which may benefit from consolidation trends and takeover potential. Exposure to Australia has been trimmed in favor of better value in Singapore.
Hong Kong: Ultra-low HIBOR levels and recovering residential demand support REITs and Developers, particularly those with floating rate debt. Retail REITs benefit from stabilizing sales and moderating outbound travel. Link REIT and Fortune REIT may gain from Stock Connect inclusion. Caution remains for the oversupplied Central office market.
Singapore: Large-cap SREITs (CICT, CLAR, Frasers Centrepoint) offer compelling relative value. Despite rate cuts, sector underperformance persists, but the high yield spread over rates is expected to attract rotation from banks. Accretive acquisition pipelines and potential growth in data centers and healthcare assets add upside.
For decades, the real estate industry has viewed insurance as a necessary cost of doing business — a safeguard against unforeseen risks, but rarely a tool for creating value.
That paradigm is shifting.
Link Asset Management (Link) has introduced how real estate climate resilience efforts can be linked with insurance terms — a model that doesn’t just provide protection but actively rewards investment in climate adaptation measures.
By quantifying climate risk and making targeted resilience investments, Link, through its insurance broker Marsh Hong Kong, secured an 11.7% reduction in property insurance premiums — significantly outperforming the industry’s ~3% average. Even more importantly, Link negotiated an additional 7.5% premium reduction tied to its loss ratio, creating a direct financial incentive to continue investing in long-term climate preparedness.
This case study isn’t just about one company’s success. Rather, it highlights a fundamental shift and real-time opportunity for real estate firms — and insurers — to align incentives and build climate resilience.
As a reminder – that extreme weather events are already becoming more severe under climate change, leading to significant financial losses
As a showcase – of proactive climate risk adaptation measures
As a call to action – to leverage the mutually beneficial relationship between asset managers and insurers for building climate resilience
From Risk Awareness to Resilience in Action
Extreme weather events are no longer an anomaly — they are an operational reality. In September 2023, Hong Kong experienced a “double whammy” of Super Typhoon Saola and record-breaking black rainstorms, causing widespread property damage. The conventional response across the real estate industry was reactive: filing claims, absorbing losses, and bracing for inevitable premium hikes.
Link chose a different approach. Rather than treating resilience as a cost, it saw an opportunity for investment — one that could be quantified, optimised, and ultimately rewarded.
Link reframed its relationship with insurers from a transactional one to a partnership in risk management:
Worked with Marsh Hong Kong to embed resilience efforts into a resilience-focused insurance roadshow, bringing 22 insurers into early discussions.
Presented quantifiable evidence of risk reduction, showcasing Link’s HK$5 million investment into flood resilience measures.
Collaborated with AXA on a Sustainability-Linked Insurance Proof-of-Concept, demonstrating how Link’s flood resilience measures could lower potential losses by 10- 20%.
Negotiated performance-linked premium reductions, securing additional cost savings contingent on a low loss ratio and incentivising continued investment in resilience.
By integrating risk identification, targeted mitigation, and transparent insurer engagement, Link transformed resilience from a defensive measure into a financial advantage.
The Resilience Framework: Six Pillars of Climate Adaptation
Building a resilience-linked insurance model requires a structured, data-backed approach. Link’s framework consists of six interconnected pillars:
Comprehensive Climate Risk Assessments
Asset-Level Resilience Enhancements
Standardised Emergency Protocols
Preventive Maintenance and Drainage Optimisation
Proactive Stakeholder Coordination
Rapid Recovery and Business Continuity Planning
Each of these pillars feeds into Link’s resilience-linked insurance structure, ensuring measurable risk reduction, operational stability, and long-term financial savings.
From Resilience to Competitive Advantage
The results of Link’s resilience-first strategy were significant:
By embedding climate resilience into its operational and financial strategy, Link has proven that climate adaptation isn’t just a defensive measure — it’s a value driver.
“We welcome the efforts made by Link REIT to make their assets more resilient and sustainable, and are pleased to show our support through promising insurance capacity and T&Cs. Extreme weather and climate risk are real issues for real estate and best tackled when all stakeholders work together.”
– Quoted by one insurer on an anonymous basis
What’s next?
For Real Estate Leaders: How can you integrate data-driven resilience into your portfolio strategy?
For Insurers: How can underwriting models evolve to incentivise proactive climate adaptation?
For Investors: How does climate resilience factor into long-term asset valuation?
Real estate is at a crossroads. Rising climate risks will continue to challenge traditional insurance models, but Link’s resilience-linked insurance structure offers a replicable blueprint for other asset owners.
The shift from reactive insurance to proactive risk management has begun — who will follow?
Singapore Flexible Office Market H1 2025 – The Future of Flex (CBRE)
Singapore’s flexible workspace market has matured into a dynamic and diverse ecosystem, offering a broad range of solutions—from on-demand access for startups to fully managed suites for enterprises. This evolution reflects both the rising sophistication of occupier needs and the agility of operators in responding to them.
Today, with about 5% market penetration rate, the flex workspace market features a healthy mix of brand positions, ranging from premium hospitality-driven environments to value-oriented, efficiency-focused models. Our findings show that the top 10 brands (by market size) now command 80% of the market, with varied pricing and positioning offerings to meet the needs of businesses across all sizes and sectors. This ensures that companies can find workspaces aligned with their identity, culture, and operational goals.
Notably, flex space is increasingly integrated into asset strategies, with landlords and operators collaborating to enhance both building value and tenant experience. As the market continues to evolve, innovation and adaptability will be key to shaping the future of work. This report further explores what occupiers seek and how landlords and operators can continue to strengthen the value proposition of flexible workplaces in Singapore.
Evolving work patterns in the post-pandemic era, employees’ demands for a better workplace experience, the large regional supply pipeline and high vacancy, and the urgent need to enhance older properties to maintain their competitiveness are just a few of the factors converging to drive a new era of office innovation in Asia Pacific.
Supported and enabled by the latest technology, landlords and investors are striving to enhance tenants’ experience at every stage of their employees’ day; from the commute, to the work environment, and to the leisure offering.
Our latest report explains how innovation can drive these improvements via three pillars of office innovation:
Asia Pacific Data Centre Trends & Opportunities (CBRE)
The Asia Pacific data centre sector has undergone a significant transformation in recent years, evolving from what was formerly regarded as a mere piece of infrastructure to a highly sought-after real estate asset at the cutting edge of technology.
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud services boom is driving robust demand for both colocation and hyperscale data centres across Asia Pacific, stirring interest from real estate investors keen to capitalise on this rapid expansion.
This report explores the key data centre investment trends, opportunities and outlook for the sector in Asia Pacific, and offers insights into the data centre occupier and investment markets in Australia, Hong Kong SAR, India, Japan, Korea, Mainland China, Singapore and Southeast Asia.
Kemmu Kawai joined Longevity Partners Japan in September 2022 as the Country Director. Based in Tokyo, he oversees all operations and activities in Japan, the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. He brings him more than 16 years of experience in finance where he specialised in real estate and credit investments. Before joining Longevity Partners, he served as a Portfolio Manager at Norinchukin Bank and as Investment Manager at Center Point Development.
