The View | Singapore’s resilient real estate market is acing the pandemic test
- In Asia, Singapore has performed significantly better than its peers, coming out of the crisis even stronger in certain areas of the property industry
- Examples of the appeal of the nation’s property sector include the booming residential market and strong grade A office rents
Among the industries that were hit hardest by the Covid-19 pandemic, real estate was at the top of the list. In the commercial sector, all the main regions of the world suffered double-digit year-on-year declines in transaction volumes last year, with the hotel, retail and office markets suffering the most.
While activity in investment and occupier markets has picked up sharply this year, office leasing volumes in the second quarter of this year in Europe, the United States and the Asia-Pacific were still far below their levels in the second quarter of 2019.
Even in the residential sector, where house prices in many major cities have surged since the pandemic erupted, buoyed by ultra-low borrowing costs and the search for more space, some of the world’s top metropolises, including New York and Paris, continued to suffer falls in prices in year-on-year terms in the second quarter of this year.
While there have been pockets of resilience in the worst-affected economies, and some segments of the property industry – in particular the e-commerce-driven logistics sector – have thrived during the pandemic, no country has emerged from the crisis unscathed.
However, in Asia, one market has performed significantly better than its peers, both at home as well as on the global stage.