Global direct investment in commercial property will begin to rebound this year after reaching a 10-year low in 2023 as sellers come to terms with repricing across the industry, JLL capital markets executive Riaz Cassum said.
JLL is more optimistic about global commercial property investment, particularly in the second half of the year, Cassum told CoStar News in an interview at the Mipim conference in Cannes, France. Overall commercial property deals last year totaled $594 billion, a 44% drop from 2022, in what Chicago-based JLL called the lowest direct investment, including cross-border transactions, in more than 10 years.
"Our pipeline is building, and what's more important, it's building with opportunities or transactions where the client is much more realistic about what they can expect to achieve in this marketplace," he said.
As for which regions are likely to be buyers of property in the United States this year, Cassum said big blocks of capital will come from the Middle East. Buyers remain flush with cash because of higher oil prices, he said.
"Australia is another area that we're watching," he said. "And then Singapore and Japan. Frankly, we're seeing a lot of interest on the part of Japanese investors, particularly for housing, whether it's single-family rental or multifamily housing. So we're seeing Japanese groups that we had never heard of before starting to dip their toe in the water."
European investors, however, are expected to be "less active because they've been quite active in the past and actually have full allocations," Cassum said.