Asia Pacific
Against the iconic backdrop of Hong Kong’s skyline, a room filled with cross-disciplinary real estate experts engaged in a lively display of unprecedented collaboration. Brightly colored sticky notes plastered across the floor-to-ceiling windows mapped out an intricate web of relationships between developers, tech providers, facility managers, investors, utilities, and more. The pioneering systems change workshop was piloted by ULI APAC Greenprint and aimed to address a critical challenge: how to accelerate climate tech implementations that will lead to long-term sustainability.
Renowned U.S. architect opens up about his extraordinary career in China and the U.S.
As owners and investors face mounting pressure to make new projects compliant with modern environmental standards, the concept of “whole-life” carbon has become a focus of increased interest. The model approximates the total emissions of a structure, both during construction and over its lifespan. A panel at the 2024 Asia Pacific Summit in Tokyo took a hard look at the implications of this approach.
The final day of the 2024 ULI Asia Pacific summit in Tokyo featured a capital markets panel with leaders from both European and North American funds, who shared their insights into the region’s real estate markets—and how those markets stack up against their global counterparts.
Since global central banks began hiking interest rates in 2022, Japan’s lower cost of capital has made it a magnet for global investors seeking deals in one of the very few major markets still offering positive yield spreads.
For many years, India’s real estate markets languished in the shadow of booming Mainland China, with investors flocking there to buy real estate and tap into emerging demand. More recently, as China has struggled to mediate structural oversupply in real assets, investment flows are moving increasingly in a southerly direction. A panel at the ULI’s 2024 Asia Pacific Summit in Tokyo addressed the dynamics of current investment landscapes in each market.
The winners of the second ULI Hines Student Competition for the Asia Pacific region faced a dual challenge: create a compelling urban development proposal and follow in the footsteps of classmates who won the inaugural contest.
Twelve developments from across Asia have been selected as winners of the 2024 ULI Asia Pacific Awards for Excellence, one of the real estate industry’s most prestigious honors. Announced at the 2024 ULI Asia Pacific Summit held in May in Tokyo, this year’s award winners include projects in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and the Philippines. These winners will automatically qualify as nominees for the 2024 ULI Global Awards for Excellence, where they will compete against projects from North America and Europe.
With investors across the Asia Pacific continuing to avoid mainstream asset classes as they seek out higher returns and more reliable income streams, attention has turned increasingly to “living assets”—a broadly defined concept that includes the multifamily, senior living, and student housing sectors.
The 2024 Asia Pacific Home Attainability Index by ULI offers a comprehensive overview of housing attainability across the Asia Pacific region. In this third edition, the report includes data from three additional cities—Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Perth—expanding its coverage to 48 cities in 11 countries, namely, Australia, China (including Hong Kong SAR), India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Singapore
Despite the monetary headwinds and continued economic uncertainty around the world, there is a strong belief that the global real estate industry is at a “pivot point,” with improving prospects ahead for renewed investment activity, according to the latest Emerging Trends in Real Estate® Global Outlook 2024 from PwC and the Urban Land Institute.
Six impressive developments from around the world have been selected as winners of the 2023 ULI Global Awards for Excellence. This year’s winners include two from North America, two from Europe, and two from Asia Pacific.
As the world’s population continues to grow, there will be a need for increased urbanization to accommodate more people. The question is how and when should urban planners decide to regenerate, when to expand and when to create new cities, for sustainable growth and development of future cities, since each approach comes with its benefits and its drawbacks.
Hong Kong
The Dasha River Ecological Corridor focuses on the ecological restoration project in the Nanshan district of Shenzhen, China. The project, led by China Resources Land and master planned by AECOM, aims to restore the watercourse that connects the coastal Nanshan district to the northern mountainous area of the city.
ULI Asia Pacific report builds the business case.
With the Asia Pacific region comprising 4.3 billion people and many of the world’s biggest cities, the sheer scale of the sustainability challenge there is daunting. However, asset owners are increasingly using more sustainable designs and technologies to boost the performance of their assets.