Alan Dalgleish heads ANREV’s mission to assemble market data for members

Alan Dalgleish, chief executive of the Asian Association For Investors In Non-Listed Real Estate Vehicles (ANREV) is responsible for leading the executive office team and for working with the association’s management and executive boards to implement its strategic growth plans. He was previously ANREV’s director of research and professional standards.

Dalgleish has an extensive real estate background, principally in research, consulting and capital markets, having spent more than 25 years working in real estate markets throughout Asia.

He was previously based in Singapore, where he was responsible for the consulting and real estate finance business lines in Asia at CBRE, one of the world’s leading commercial real estate service providers.

Before that he was country manager for Colliers International in the Philippines. He’s also spent many years working in Hong Kong, for leading investor and developer Hongkong Land, a member of the Jardine group of companies, as well as for investment bank Société Générale and early in his career in a research role for First Pacific Davies.

Dalgleish was educated in Scotland, where he attended Edinburgh University, and arrived in Hong Kong in 1982, spending his first three years here working as a police inspector. Since then, he has been developing his career in the real estate industry.

He is a fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

What is ANREV?

It is a non-profit organisation driven by institutional investors in Asian non-listed property funds. Our mission is trying to improve the transparency and the quality of the market data in the unlisted real estate industry.

How can ANREV help to improve the practice for real estate fund managers?

With our research and surveys of our members, we are trying to remove uncertainty about investment from decision making.

It will lower the risk and generate better returns for pension holders. Hopefully, we can also attract more capital to the industry.

What kind of research is the association doing?

We collect performance data of our fund manager members. One of the key reports is an investment intention report. This is an annual study which provides a guide to expected allocation trends in the Asian non-listed real estate funds industry.

We start working on the annual survey in October and November and ask our member what they intend to do in the coming one or two years and what they see as the pros and cons of unlisted real estate funds.

We have more than 200 members which engage in US$100 billion property investment value in vehicles that are operating in the Asia-Pacific region. With the exchange of data and financial reports, it will make the industry operate smoother.

ANREV is a sister organisation to the European Association For Investors In Non-Listed Real Estate Vehicles (INREV), which based in Amsterdam, has longer history and is bigger in scale. INREV was founded in 2002.

ANREV has European members who operate in this region, and really want to improve through better practise and greater transparency. So we set up a similar organisation and named it ANREV.

Does the report really reflect the members’ investment strategies?

Yes, we want to track the accuracy of our research. We hired RCA, which monitors commercial property data, to conduct a correlation study nine months after we published the report. The result shows our members investment plans are proceeding according to their response in the study. For instance, the intention survey indicates members prefer investing in Japan and the investment trend shows the capital is really going to Japan.

Who are the association members?

Among the 200 members, 20 per cent are big institutional investors and sovereign wealth groups like Singapore GIC Real Estate, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Fifty per cent of them are fund managers such as the Blackstone Group and Brookfield Asset Management, while the remaining 30 per cent are service providers including lawyers, accountants and banks that are actively engaged in the industry.

Where are they based?

Fifty per cent of memberships are located in Hong Kong and Singapore but we also have active participation of members from Australia, Japan, India and China. We have nearly 70 per cent of the [top] global 50 funds managers as our members.

What countries most attract association members?

They are looking for highly liquid and more transparent market such as Japan and Australia. They also interested in pouring capital into gateway cities in the region like Hong Kong and Singapore.

Seoul is expected to generate increasing investment in the region and China provides ample opportunities as well.

Do you have a target for the expansion of the association’s membership?

We are growing and we see INREV as our guide. It has nearly 400 members. One day, we may grow bigger than INREV. We have seen Japan and China, for instance, have stepped up efforts to invest overseas and that will create demand for investment data.