Hong Kong returns as one of top property investment locations
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The rise in ranking comes after Hong Kong, along with mainland China, finally ended its zero-Covid policy.
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HONG KONG – Hong Kong has made a return to a ranking of the top five Asia-Pacific investment destinations by property consultancy CBRE for the first time since 2020, thanks to low pricing and an expected recovery from the pandemic.
The report on real estate investor intentions for 2023 showed that the Asian financial hub came in at No. 5 after Tokyo, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City and Sydney, among the most preferred cities for cross-border investments.
“In the past few years, nobody wanted to buy Hong Kong,” Dr Henry Chin, CBRE’s Asia-Pacific head of research, said in an earlier interview, citing social unrest in the city and its strict Covid-19 policy.
The consultancy has seen more and more investors coming to Hong Kong because of expectations that the city will recover from the pandemic, and pricing that has declined enough to become attractive, according to Dr Chin.
The survey, conducted in November and December 2022, had 534 responses and was done prior to China lifting its major Covid-19 restrictions.
“Hong Kong’s recovery story will be a lot faster and stronger than what we think,” Dr Chin said.
The rise in ranking comes after Hong Kong, along with mainland China, finally ended its zero-Covid policy, which had kept the city isolated from the rest of the world, battering the economy.
The city’s economic growth for 2022 was estimated to have contracted by around 3 per cent, according to a Bloomberg survey, and home sales in 2022 slumped to their lowest level since 2008.
The CBRE report found that net buying intentions in the Asia-Pacific region are to fall to the weakest level since 2019, driven by concerns of a recession, central bank policy changes and mismatches in buyer and seller expectations.
But 93 per cent of institutional investors expect allocations for real estate to increase or remain stable.
The top sectors attracting interest include industrial and logistics, offices and residential.
Other alternative property types for investments include healthcare-related assets, data centres, cold storage and real estate debt, according to the report. BLOOMBERG
