Japan, particularly its capital city of Tokyo, remains a safe haven for investors still craving core real estate.
Japanese markets remain particularly appealing to investors because of the “positive yield spread between real estate assets and the cost of capital,” according to Emerging Trends in Real Estate Asia Pacific 2017, a forecast survey jointly published by the Urban Land Institute and PwC:
“One reason for this is the Bank of Japan’s ongoing bond repurchase program, which has soaked up most of the Japanese government bonds that are held by domestic banks or otherwise available on the open market. Banks are left with few investment alternatives than to lend to real estate at ‘ridiculously cheap’ rates.”
As we prepare — as best we can — for what 2017 will offer investors, here are some of the news stories and features on Japan published by Institutional Real Estate, Inc. this past year:
- Blackstone to sell Japanese properties for $2.3b
- TH Real Estate completes debut investment in Japan
- M&G Real Estate buys two properties in Japan
- Gaining entry: How institutional investors can best access large-scale core real estate investment in Japan
- Less Than Zero: The world experiments with negative interest rates
- Japanese pension fund hires first overseas real estate and infrastructure managers
- Ping An Real Estate commits $300m to Japan logistics development projects
- Going negative: The Bank of Japan ponders the monetary frontier
- Invesco buys five buildings in Japan for $452m
- CPPIB, GLP form Japanese development JV
- Japan’s pension whales: GPIF — the country’s largest pension fund — will trigger overseas real estate investment by other institutional investors
- Reforming Japan: Japanese corporate governance and pension fund changes have implications for real estate
The views, statements and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Institutional Real Estate, Inc.
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Jennifer Molloy is senior editor of Institutional Real Estate Asia Pacific.
