Thought Leadership

Key Takeaways

• Living sectors are going mainstream: Institutional capital is increasingly flowing into co-living, BTR, student accommodation and senior housing across APAC.
• Significant growth runway remains: APAC accounts for around 60% of the world’s population but attracted only 12% of global living-sector capital in 2025, highlighting a substantial allocation gap.
• Demand continues to outpace supply: Major markets across the region face shortages of professionally managed rental housing, creating long-term opportunities for investors.
• Market-specific opportunities are emerging: The report highlights strong growth potential in Singapore co-living, Australia BTR, Hong Kong student housing and India’s rapidly expanding PBSA sector.
• Operational expertise is becoming a key differentiator: Investors are increasingly combining capital with local partnerships, platform strategies and operating capabilities to create scale and drive performance.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Strong demand for premium office space, coupled with the limited supply of new office developments, has led to a two-tier leasing market. While premium office buildings continue to enjoy healthy occupancy levels and rental growth, lower-quality buildings face greater challenges in attracting and retaining tenants
• Based on data compiled by Savills, the vacancy rate for CBD Grade A offices declined for the third consecutive quarter by 1.0 percentage point (ppt) quarteron-quarter (QoQ) to 5.6% in Q2/2026. This was the lowest since Q3/2022 when vacancy rate was at 5.2%.
• With vacancy rates remaining tight, particularly in premium grade office buildings, and with limited upcoming supply, landlords have maintained a firm stance on both asking and renewal rents. This has led to average CBD Grade A office rents to increase further by 2.8% QoQ to S$10.42 per sq ft in the quarter.
• Barring a significant deterioration in the political-economic sphere, even a marginal increase in office demand could result in disproportionately strong rental growth given the current supply constraints. Accordingly, we are revising our 2026 rental growth forecast upward from 3%–5% to 5%, while projecting a further 5%–7% year-on-year (YoY) increase in 2027.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

0. Living has been APAC’s most resilient real estate sector in recent years

• It was the only sector to record investment volume growth during both the COVID-19 pandemic and the global rate-hiking cycle, at 51% and 18%, respectively.
• Rental growth has also consistently outpaced both inflation and interest rates, preserving real income while maintaining a positive spread over financing costs.
• Together, these characteristics reinforce APAC living as a compelling, income-oriented allocation within a diversified real estate portfolio.

1. Structural demand is no longer the differentiator, execution is

• Demographic shifts in APAC, particularly shrinking household sizes, the growth of single-person households, continued urbanisation and cross-border mobility, are increasing demand for housing and heightening affordability pressures.
• This is unfolding alongside persistent housing shortages and elevated homeownership barriers, further shifting demand towards rental solutions.
• Government policy has emerged as a key growth catalyst, boosting demand through immigration and labour mobility while creating a more supportive environment for institutional rental housing through planning and regulatory reforms.
• The combination of policy-supported population growth and persistent housing supply strengthens demand visibility, supports high occupancy and creates favourable conditions for sustainable rental growth and long-term income resilience.
• Demographic tailwinds and policy reforms underpin demand and expand the investable universe, but excess returns will increasingly depend on how investors enter, operate and scale assets.

2. There is no single APAC living strategy

• While the APAC living opportunity set is expanding, it is not a homogeneous asset class. Each market-subsector follows a different institutionalisation path, offering distinct risk-return profiles and entry strategies.
• In Japan, direct acquisition of stabilised multifamily assets remains the dominant strategy given the market’s established depth and liquidity.
• Australia’s PBSA and coliving sectors feature a mix of ground-up development and conversion opportunities.
• In Singapore, entry strategy into the coliving sector largely revolves around adaptive reuse and conversion of existing assets.
• Hong Kong PBSA is likely the most conversion-led living market in APAC, driven by policy reforms.
• Korea’s living market is in an early stage of institutionalisation, creating opportunities for investors to establish operating capabilities and sourcing networks ahead of broader market development.

3. Operational capability and scale are becoming core sources of alpha

• Revenue management, product positioning, active asset management and local expertise are increasingly driving performance.
• Regional platforms can enhance sourcing, standardise design and procurement, optimise pricing and operations, and create multiple capital recycling and exit pathways.

Takeaways from the APREA Japan REIT Forum

• Improving market fundamentals and expanding capital market initiatives are creating opportunities to broaden investor participation, deepen liquidity, and strengthen the long-term competitiveness of Japan’s REIT sector.

• Active asset management, portfolio optimisation, and operational excellence are becoming increasingly important sources of value creation, with investors placing greater emphasis on growth alongside stable income.

• Private REITs continue to gain scale and institutional support, while opportunities are emerging across alternative sectors—including logistics, residential, healthcare, data centres and social infrastructure—as the investable universe expands.

• Structural changes in Japan’s real estate market, together with greater collaboration across industry stakeholders and continued product innovation, are positioning both listed and private REITs for the next phase of sustainable growth.

Across the APAC region, living sector supply is increasingly being created by dislocation in other asset classes. Hotel impairment, office obsolescence, serviced apartment oversupply and selective regulatory reform are reshaping the playbook. Ground-up development still works selectively but is often not the dominant entry path.

The APREA Malaysia Conference brought together industry leaders and experts to explore opportunities shaping Malaysia’s real assets market. Key discussions focused on the growing appeal of industrial, logistics, and data centre assets; the importance of ESG and climate resilience in value creation; and strategies to attract foreign capital into sectors such as semiconductors, renewable energy, and education.

Key Highlights:

• ESG has become a core driver of long-term asset value, with climate resilience, technology integration and operational excellence increasingly influencing investment performance, asset competitiveness and institutional capital allocation.
• Industrial real estate in Malaysia is evolving into critical digital infrastructure, with AI-driven demand, power availability, connectivity and future-ready design becoming the defining factors for asset selection and long-term value creation.
• Attracting cross-border capital requires a combination of transparent regulation, strong local partnerships, disciplined market fundamentals and policy support that enhances liquidity and investor confidence.

Artificial intelligence (AI) represents the latest in a long line of general‑purpose technologies. Like electrification, computing and the internet before it, its economic and built environment impacts will unfold gradually, unevenly and nonlinearly.

Rather than attempting to predict how AI itself will evolve, this research focuses on how firms, sectors and the macroeconomy will respond to AI – and how those responses will translate into CRE fundamentals, including: 

• Productivity, growth and interest rates 
• Employment trends and space demand 
• Vacancy and absorption for major CRE sectors 
• Capital markets behavior 
• Differentiation in performance across assets and geographies 

Why this matters: The future of commercial real estate will depend less on AI’s technical capabilities and more on how productivity gains flow through hiring, revenue growth and capital allocation – dynamics tracked in real time by the AI Impact Barometer.

The APAC office fit-out market enters 2026 navigating a complex and shifting environment. While cost escalation moderated in several markets through late 2025, underlying pressures remain firmly in place, with local-currency fit-out costs continuing to rise across much of the region due to labour constraints, material pricing, and the growing complexity of mechanical, electrical, and technology systems. However, this inflationary trend is not consistently reflected in USD-denominated benchmarks, where currency depreciation in several APAC economies has dampened apparent year-on-year cost growth, creating a divergence with important implications for regional and global capital planning.

• China’s commercial REIT market is entering a new phase of growth, driven by policy support, expanding asset classes, and increasing emphasis on institutional-grade asset management and value creation.

• A multi-level REIT ecosystem is taking shape, with institutional and private REITs playing a critical role in capital recycling, operational enhancement, and the maturation of income-generating assets.

• China’s real estate investment landscape is undergoing a structural reset, with domestic capital, selective deployment strategies, and REIT-based exit pathways becoming increasingly central to market recovery and long-term resilience.

• High-growth sectors such as data centres, renewable energy, and experience-led retail are reshaping China’s real assets market, supported by technology adoption, evolving consumer behaviour, and the transition toward cleaner energy infrastructure.

• The C-REIT ecosystem is evolving toward a more operationally driven and institutionally scaled model, with opportunities emerging from distressed assets, urban renewal, and professional asset management.