Beijing realty en-block deals near high

Beijing's property investment market witnessed active en-block transactions last year in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The sales reached nearly 64 billion yuan ($9.9 billion), just off the historical peak of 86.6 billion yuan in 2019, according to CBRE. The global real estate services provider attributed it to more emerging trading opportunities for both domestic enterprises and international investors.

In the context of real estate, en-block transactions usually refer to deals with a value of more than 100 million yuan each.

Domestic self-use buyers and foreign investors were two major players in realty en-block transactions last year, contributing 34 percent and 24 percent, respectively, CBRE said.

Offices remain their major trading target. "Trading will grow further this year. Foreign investors have sustained interest in Beijing's real estate market, and some deals that were postponed due to COVID-19, will be inked shortly," said Grant Ji, head of capital markets of CBRE Northern China. "The emerging new offices region will also provide more buying opportunities."

For the first time, Beijing replaced Shanghai last year as the most popular city among foreign investors for realty en-block transactions, according to Cushman& Wakefield, a real estate services firm.

C&W data showed foreign buyers contributed 15.5 billion yuan to realty en-block transactions in Beijing, which accounted for 30 percent of the capital's total and was almost double the size of comparable deals in Shanghai.

Liu Bing, deputy director and general manager of capital market at Cushman & Wakefield China, said with COVID-19 now largely contained and the global monetary policy continuously easing, cooperation between, and acquisitions by, domestic and foreign institutions will become increasingly common.

"Beijing's stepped-up efforts in optimizing industry layouts and enhancing urban planning, together with its development of high-technology centers, helped increase the city's attractiveness to foreign investors," said Li Xiuting, associate professor of economics and management at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Liu further said China's measures to contain COVID-19 and its rapid recovery from the pandemic also boosted foreign investors' confidence in Beijing's office realty market.

Beijing's en-block transactions related to office and research and development centers accounted for 54 percent of its total realty en-block transactions. Tongzhou and Fengtai districts continued to be in focus in noncore business areas.

Last year, Beijing's realty en-block transactions accounted for more than 20 percent of the country's total, which was 204.7 billion yuan, according to Cushman& Wakefield.

"The drop in overall foreign investment in realty en-block transactions relating to offices is predictable as it came amid the COVID-19 pandemic, global economic recession and geopolitical uncertainties. With the promotion of the dual-circulation development pattern, which regards the domestic circulation as the mainstay while domestic and international circulations reinforce each other, China's real estate market is also expected to see big-ticket capital coming from domestic investors," Liu said.

"Going forward, with the novel coronavirus largely contained, global economy showing promise of a rebound, and China's efforts to boost the dual-circulation development pattern, the real estate market is expected to have a more rational and stable growth."

Those reasons also helped boost demand for Beijing's office leasing in the fourth quarter of last year, according to Cushman& Wakefield.