After nearly three years of implementing heavy-handed policies in an attempt to completely eradicate the COVID-19 virus, China is finally reopening, and that’s piquing interest from foreign investors. Now that China has abandoned its “zero-COVID” policy, real estate development firm Tishman Speyer intends to raise more capital to invest in Chinese real estate.
Now that foreign investors are allowed to visit China once again, they will have the ability to visit their projects themselves, an opportunity that Wilson Chen, Chief Executive Officer of Tishman Speyer’s China arm, says is “very important and definitely good news for them.” Chen anticipates a rise in demand for property types like retail and hospitality since individuals may now commute without constraints. But because traditional real estate sectors were struggling during the lockdown, foreign investors’ attention has shifted away from these property types and toward emerging sectors including life science and multifamily. Tishman Speyer has been prompted to investigate these new techniques by these kinds of shifts in investor interest.
Tishman Speyer first entered the market in 2006 and has since raised 32 billion yuan from domestic investors through 11 funds and co-investment vehicles with a Chinese yuan as the dominant currency. Currently, Tishman Speyer is in the midst of liquidating its Tishman Speyer China Fund (established in 2008 to seek opportunistic purchases in China), but plans to launch more Chinese-yuan denominated funds in the future to invest in both nontraditional and traditional asset classes in Chinese real estate, since Chen anticipates that some domestic investors will continue to look at conventional property types.
