LaSalle Investment Management has just launched its Investment Strategy Annual 2015, an assessment of real estate investment opportunities and risks. For several years now, we have been emphasising that prime, core or gateway markets are crowded and that, as prices have risen, the surest way to achieve outperformance is to target the big secular changes under way in demographics, technology and urbanisation — a theme we have dubbed “DTU”.

This crowding is particularly true in Asia Pacific. In a low-yield, low interest rate environment, everyone — from institutions to high-net-worth individuals to sovereign wealth funds and so on — is seeking to expand their allocation to alternative assets, including real estate. Sectors considered niche just a few years ago — Chinese logistics, Australian campgrounds, Indian medical offices — are attracting abundant inflows of capital, and not only from opportunistic investors.

Property investment yields are st