REITs Center

This in-depth report offers a comprehensive analysis of the five largest REIT markets in Asia: Japan; Singapore; Hong Kong, China (“Hong Kong”); the Chinese mainland; and India.

Key Highlights:

• In 2023, the India REIT market saw the steepest rise in total market value, up 31% year-on-year.
• Singapore’s REIT market expanded by 4%, with an average total return of 7.0%.
• Combined value of the Asia REIT market stood at US$252 billion, dominated by Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
• The industrial / logistics and multifamily REITs, displayed superior risk resilience, while data center and healthcare sectors continued strong performance.
• New policy initiatives in the Chinese mainland led to the issuance of seven new REIT products in the first four months of 2024.
• India’s combined office REITs portfolio is projected to reach 180 million sq ft by 2025, with Nexus Select Trust planning to double its portfolio size over the next five years.

Cushman & Wakefield’s 2022-2023 Asia REIT Market Insight report investigates the growing Real Estate Investment Trust market in Asia, examining the primary drivers and state of play in key markets including Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, mainland China and India.

Overall, the Asia REIT market has experienced declines in stock prices and overall market values in 2022, predominantly due to the influence of the U.S. interest rate hikes. Despite this, the Asia REIT market has still performed better than its U.S. and European counterparts.

Key highlights:

• At the close of 2022 the combined value of the Asia REIT market was at US$263.8 billion, down 14.7% y-o-y. The mainland China REIT market value surged 80% on the back of new product offerings, but the remaining Asia markets all experienced declines in market value.
• Industrial/logistics, healthcare, and data center assets have been favored by investors as new growth drivers in recent years.
• A total of 17 new products were introduced into the China REIT market in the period from March 2022 to June 2023.
• REITs have also proven popular with investors in India. Consequently, we estimate that more than 20% of Grade A office stock in India will be held by REITs by the end of 2024.

China’s first REITs were launched in 2021, following earlier exploration of real estate securitization. As of March 2023, 27 REITs have been listed in China, covering various real estate infrastructure types. The sector is transitioning from volatility to a more stable market, and opportunities for private real estate investment funds in China are expanding.

Looking ahead, Chinese REITs are expected to diversify their assets, improve valuation techniques, enhance management structures, and optimize leverage restrictions. China aims to build a REITs ecosystem based on international standards, with collaboration between local and international stakeholders playing a crucial role in its development.

The last decade was marked by an aggressive expansion of the region’s real estate markets. APREA’s Asia Pacific Market Outlook 2023: Onward and Upward held a session with REIT stakeholders on their business strategies around Covid, e-commerce, changing monetary policies, geopolitics, and new priorities (ESG) and the next set of challenges and opportunities.

In the last five years, Asia’s share of the FTSE EPRA/Nareit Developed Index, the most widely followed real estate index globally, has declined from 25.0% in 2017 to 21.0% at the end of 2022.  This movement can be largely attributed to the growth of U.S. REITs, shifting the balance of power within the listed universe further to North America, whose share of the index rose from 57.1% in 2017 to 64.0% in 2022.

The growth in the U.S. REIT universe has been driven by the emergence of a wide range of alternative real estate sectors that have arisen from structural shifts in the economy and strong demand from equity investors.  The share of these alternatives in the U.S. portion of FTSE EPRA/Nareit Developed Index rose from 34.0% in 2007, to 47.5% in 2017 and 55.0% in 2022.

Growth in the U.S. listed REIT universe has been so prominent, that index constructors such as FTSE introduced capped indices, limiting the size of the U.S. component to avoid global indices being increasingly seen as ‘US & others’ and diminishing their usefulness to investors.

One might ask: Why has Asia been unable to keep pace with the growth in U.S. alternative REITs? In fact, Asia’s alternative REIT universe has grown even faster than in the U.S.. While Asia’s weight in the global REIT index fell – from 27.1% in 2017 to 21.0% in 2022, the weight of Asian alternative REITs increased from 2.3% of the global index to 3.8%, respectively. Looking only at the Asian REIT universe, alternative REITs grew their weight by an impressive 114.7%, from 8.5% in 2017 to 18.2% 2022.

This paper, written by Joachim Kehr, Head of Asia-Pacific and a Senior Partner at CenterSquare Investment Management, investigates the sectors behind the expansion of alternative REITs in the U.S. and Asia over time and explores which sectors offer the biggest growth potential for Asian alternative REITs, proposing additional steps to sustain this growth going forward.

Despite the challenges of juggling an economy under the weight of its zero-covid policies and stringent macroprudential measures, the Chinese government has remained steadfast in implementing its vision for the country’s REIT market. 2022 ticked off another milestone in the ongoing evolution, as China’s first batch of rental property REITs went public in August, deepening financing channels for the country’s real estate sector.

Strong regulatory backing, quality asset base and robust underlying demand for dividend-rich stocks from investors in China’s US$12 trillion stock markets will remain supportive of the sector’s strong valuations. Progress is palpable, and we can expect more C-REIT listings in 2023. The inclusion of conventional commercial real estate – arguably the proverbial holy grail and the final frontier in the evolution of C-REITs – is nearing reality and the wave of listings that follow will undoubtedly be a massive investment opportunity.

Although no two cycles are the same, looking at bear markets since the 1970’s, we believe a ‘typical recession’ has already been priced in and the path forward for REITs offers promise.

This report was originally published in https://www.hazelview.com/news-updates/our-thinking/details/our-thinking/2022/08/08/global-reits-through-economic-cycles

REITs and Infrastructure Trusts have been gaining traction across Asia-Pacific. Many countries have begun to test waters by releasing their pioneer REITs. Philippines has launched their pioneer REIT in 2020, alongside UAE that released their first Green REIT, whilst China’s highly anticipated REIT pilot program finally came to fruition in June 2021, with the launch of the retail tranches of its first nine REITs all oversubscribed on its first day. China REITs are currently only backed by infrastructure assets packaged in a mutual fund structure, deliberately picked by authorities to spearhead the country’s recovery from the pandemic.

India made its debut for REITs with Blackstone and Embassy-sponsored Embassy Office Parks REIT getting listed on April 1, 2019 as India’s first Real Estate Investment Trust.

Two other REITs, the Raheja Group-backed Mindspace Business Parks REIT and more recently, Brookfield India REIT, have also debuted on the Indian stock exchanges. Together, these three REITs total approximately USD 7.5 billion of market capitalization and cover 86.0 million square feet of Grade-A commercial office space in India. India’s infrastructure investment trust (InvIT) market is growing leaps and bounds and stands at over USD 10billion and is expected to expand to over US$100 billion in the next five years, according to CRISIL Ratings.

The adoption of REITs will continue to accelerate with momentum in 2022 likely to be sustained by the region’s emerging markets. Thailand has already four in waiting. Philippines unveiled its first REIT at the height of the pandemic last year.

This reference guide covers REITs and Infrastructure Trust regulations and taxation in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, and Singapore.

Cushman & Wakefield’s 2021-2022 Asia REIT Market Insight report investigates the burgeoning Real Estate Investment Trust market in Asia, examining the primary drivers and state of play in key markets mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, India, Japan and Singapore.

The report reveals that, backed by robust capital structures, sufficient financial liquidity, and supportive regulatory policies, REITs continue to gain overall momentum as the pandemic subsides with logistics/industrial and data centre REITs outperforming more traditional asset classes.

Key highlights:

• Asia market REITs recovered strongly during 2021 after demonstrating notable resilience through the peak of the COVID-19 period, supported by new economy asset classes.
• Industrial and logistics REITs in the Asia market showed the greatest resilience, recording a total return of 24.7 percent, as all other asset classes achieved positive returns.
• Supply chain uncertainties are creating demand as operators accumulate reserves of warehouse space.
• Mature REIT markets can expect to see greater M&A activity through the remainder of 2022 while developing markets can expect to see growth of REITs accelerate.