Melbourne has been the single largest gainer in ‘prime’ real estate metro investments ranking, after having moved up three places while Sydney was the only Australian city in top 10, according to real estate investment management firm, Heitman Real Estate Securities Group (HRES).
Although London, New York City and Paris continued to top this year’s ranking, which aims to identify cities and investee companies and real estate investments trusts (REITs) for potential inclusion into its prime strategy, the proprietary total scores for both London and NYC actually fell as opposed to cities like Seoul and Melbourne, Heitman’s senior managing director, listed real estate securities, John White said.
“Both Seoul and Melbourne have benefitted from inbound real estate investment capital as global investors are attracted to their diverse and stable economies whereas London and New York suffered somewhat in their attractiveness as a business friendly destination,” he said.
“Although the composition of this year’s rankings remains relatively unchanged, with Taipei marking the only new entrant, we did see some interesting movement in each city’s relative scores.
“As economic volatility continues to occur as a result of COVID-19, the implications from Brexit bear out, and climate risk factors become more acutely felt, we expect certain markets’ scores, particularly smaller and second tier cities in Europe and Australasia to continue to climb, while others will depend largely on their responses to these issues.”
As far as Asia-Pacific was concerned, Taipei entered the rankings at 30 as a result of its rising environmental sustainability measures and growing attractiveness as a residential destination while Singapore was the region’s largest faller, moving from three to five in the rankings year-over-year, due to peaking global trade and high levels of housing unaffordability.
The ranking also saw that this year’s top 10 prime cities’ cumulative scores all fell, outside of Paris (ranked third) and Los Angeles (7), driven by the uncertainties around the global pandemic and the commensurate stay-at-home combined with lockdown orders in certain cities.
Also, locales more heavily reliant on office use and tourism may continue to experience increased score depreciation relative to their peers if the virus is not contained or a vaccine rollout is delayed, the firm said.
HRES’s annual real estate market rankings are compiled through a proprietary review process utilizing approximately 150 published surveys and indices to rank the attractiveness of the world’s leading real estate markets. A select number of the surveys incorporated into Heitman’s analysis reflect a broad cross section of economic, trade, property, human capital, and cultural and political characteristics.
Source: Heitman
