The dilemma of high vacancy rate of office buildings with high vacancy rate of 38 billion yuan in commercial and office asset transactions within 22 days to be solved
Our reporter Wang Lixin
On June 28, CapitaLand Group packaged 6 Raffles and sold them to China Ping An Life for a price of 9.6 billion yuan.
A week before, "Chartering Company" Pan Shiyi sold 91% of SOHO China's equity to Blackstone Group for a transaction price of US$3 billion.
On June 7, Harmony Health acquired Beijing SK Building for 9.06 billion yuan.
Within 22 days, three large transactions in the field of commercial real estate totaled about 38 billion yuan. Such intensive and high-standard transactions are rare in the industry.
But the signal behind it is that insurance capital, asset management and other institutions are attacking China's commercial real estate assets, and the price is not high.
"From the perspective of the performance of large-scale property transactions, although the transaction market cycle has become longer, market activity has not declined under the two-wheel drive of self-use and investment. Investors still maintain a high degree of attention to high-quality projects in the market." June 24, At the 3rd China Commercial Real Estate Brand Building Forum, Liu Kai, deputy secretary general of the Quanlian Real Estate Chamber of Commerce and chairman of Fangxun.com, told the Securities Daily and other media that office buildings are still owned by commercial real estate investors, whether for self-use or investment. Preferred.
As Liu Kai said, as a subdivision of real estate, shopping malls, office buildings, and industrial parks are important carriers for regional economic development and professional transformation. However, excluding the phenomenon of regional market boom, from the perspective of the overall national market, the current commercial real estate is continuous It has been at a peak of supply for many years, which has driven the vacancy rate to rise and the level of rent (selling price) to fall.
Between this "high" and "lower", even the core commercial assets in first-tier cities, coupled with first-class operators, seem to be unable to withstand the pressure of low operating returns and heavy capital deposits, and are eager to exit the market. The safety of falling bags".
What's wrong with the current commercial real estate?
With this kind of thinking, the "Securities Daily" reporter tried to explore the truth of the current commercial real estate market through interviews and research.
Three outstanding issues
In terms of market size, according to statistics from the Shell Research Institute, the average annual compound growth rate of commercial and office space in the past ten years has exceeded 10%; as of 2020, the area of commercial and business buildings will be 2.9 billion square meters; a conservative estimate is that if 2021 The total annual real estate sales scale is 17.5 trillion yuan, of which residential properties are 14.3 trillion yuan and commercial real estate is about 2.6 trillion yuan.
Of course, the scale of the stock of commercial real estate is even greater.
"In 2021, the country is estimated to have 700 million square meters of office buildings and about 17 billion square meters of industrial parks. China has a large amount of stock assets." Min Jie, chairman of Mumianhui Group Co., Ltd., told the Securities Daily that its three major manifestations are rents. Low yields, extensive operations, and undervalued assets.
It is not difficult to see that the above "three major manifestations" have brought about the current market situation with high vacancy rates.
According to statistics from the Housing News Index, in the second half of 2020, the vacancy rate of office buildings in first-tier cities will all run above 20%, both hitting 10-year highs; Shanghai and Shenzhen even exceeded 25%.
The average vacancy rate of office buildings nationwide is close to 30%, and the vacancy rate of commercial buildings is as high as 35%.
The Housing News Index Research Institute pointed out in the "2021 China Top 100 Commercial Real Estate Research Report" that there are three prominent problems in the current commercial real estate market. One is that the overall new supply is large, and long-term idle assets affect sustainable development; the other is new growth. Commercial, industrial, and office demand are seriously insufficient to support such a large-scale supply; third, there is a mismatch between industrial development and Grade A office buildings in the commercial real estate market.
Three directions change
"Although the short-term huge supply and the destocking of stocks are still the test that the market needs to face, the long-term good situation of commercial real estate has not changed." Liu Kai, deputy secretary general of the Quanlian Real Estate Chamber of Commerce and chairman of Fangxun.com, told the Securities Daily "The reporter said that with the continuous advancement of national financial opening and technological innovation, the office market still has a lot of room for growth, and the industry's in-depth operation and innovation trend will also be further deepened.
In Liu Kai's view, China's commercial real estate has not only achieved rapid recovery on the market side, but commercial real estate enterprises have also actively adjusted their strategies to empower industry development with operations, asset-light and smart technology, and meet the trend of consumption internal circulation with a new business model. , Thus entering the "new track" of high-quality development.
Under the new cycle of high-quality development, the development of the commercial real estate market is undergoing three major changes.
First, the transition from development to operation.
In the era of commercial real estate stock, the industry has shifted from development-driven to operation-driven, and operational capabilities have become one of the core values.
The leading commercial real estate companies abandon the simple rent collection model and turn to heavy operations, seek benefits from management, promote value enhancement through asset operation, and provide commercial real estate users (terminal enterprise users) with more professional and diversified management services.
Second, the shift from heavy assets to light assets.
With the long-term decline of industry profit rate and leverage ratio, "heavy assets" is no longer the best choice for commercial real estate companies, and the "light assets" model with low risk, high rate of return, and high degree of specialization is popular.
Third, the transition from intelligence to digitalization.
The digital economy and new infrastructure policies promote the digital transformation of commercial real estate, and the development of the Internet and digital technology reshapes the commercial real estate development model.
Most industry insiders agree that the future development of China’s industrial real estate will face four major trends: the development model will shift from “selling houses and land” to “holding operations”, the product model will shift from “park economy” to “urban economy”, and the profit model will change From "customer thinking" to "partner thinking", the operating model will shift from "management park" to "service park".
At the same time, with the explosion of the first batch of nine infrastructure public offering REITs, China's public offering REITs, which have been brewing for more than ten years, were finally born.
Public offering REITs have opened up the full life cycle development model of "investment, financing, construction, management, and withdrawal" of commercial real estate, and at the same time opened the door to commercial real estate investment for investors.
(Securities Daily)