Asia Pacific listed real estate companies experienced a difficult month in August as the markets were negatively impacted by the prospect of globally higher interest rates and the continued sell-off of income-orientated investments. The region’s listed property companies were down 1.6 percent during the month, according to data from SNL Financial, with regional returns denominated back to US dollars and country returns in local currency. In particular, REITs received the brunt of the sell-off due to their generally higher sensitivity to interest rate changes as compared to developers. Asia Pacific REITs were down 4.0 percent for the month, which was slightly better than the –6.6 percent return for global REITs. As a result, Asia Pacific listed real estate companies are down 3 percent through the first eight months of 2013, which lags global real estate returns of –0.1 percent.

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