Mainland property consulting will undergo a transformation in the next few years as the business market matures for multinational corporations.
Industry observers say there will be room for fewer property consultancies in the market - each aligned to increasingly larger deals - meaning that firms of international standing will have a competitive edge over local rivals.
Alfred Lai Chi-keung, vice-chairman of Vigers, an international property consultancy with a representative office in Shanghai, said: 'There are several hundred local property management firms, consultants and agencies in each city that have popped up in recent years, but few of them are very professional.' Mr Lai said local firms had seized at least half of the market in property management and consulting.
However, few of them had been able to impact the market with the large property deals typically done with the multinational corporations, which is increasingly how the market is developing in the modern office centres of Shanghai and Beijing.
Randy White, the Beijing-based mainland director of Cushman & Wakefield, said: 'The high end of the [mainland property] market is driven by the requirements of multinationals . . . as their operations grow, corporate headquarters back home are going to pay more and more attention to what the field offices are doing.' Mr White said deals such as the one United States computer giant Hewlett-Packard recently struck, taking up almost 100,000 square feet of space in Beijing, would define the market.
'There is soon going to be a consolidation among property consultants in China as the demands of the multinationals become greater,' he said.
