The “birth” of Asian REITs (ex-Australia) started in Japan with the listings of Nippon Building Fund and Japan Real Estate Investment Corp. in September 2001. Other markets soon followed. In July 2012, CapitaMall Trust, the first Sing-apore REIT, celebrated its 10-year anniversary. Since inception, Capita-Mall has returned an annualised 16.0 percent in US dollar terms. By way of comparison, the FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Global Real Estate Index returned 9.1 percent in US dollar terms during the same period.

This same decade saw spectacular growth in Asian REITs, with the universe now consisting of around 100 REITs with a market cap of roughly US$120 billion. Including the whole Asia Pacific region brings the totals to about 120 organisations and approximately US$200 billion in market cap. A look at Asian real estate markets during the past decade sug