Chinese investors, once among the most active buyers of commercial property in the United States, sold $31.7 billion of US commercial real estate between 2019 and last year, 15 times more than what they acquired during the same period, according to MSCI Real Assets, a real estate and infrastructure data provider, reports the South China Morning Post.
The divestment trend is expected to continue amid the high interest rate environment, leading to continuous declines in asset values in the US. Additionally, some Chinese investors are rushing to sell their foreign real estate holdings to free up cash as they face a worsening property crisis in China, according to analysts.
The largest sale occurred in 2019 when GLP, a Singaporean logistics company backed by a consortium of Chinese investors, sold industrial assets across multiple funds to Blackstone Real Estate Partners, amounting to $18.7 billion. Excluding the GLP deal, an additional $11 billion in assets were sold between 2020 and 2023.