Morgan Stanley Finds Opportunity in Distressed Property Assets – and more of today’s China Real Estate Links | January 23, 2013

Here is a list of the day’s latest China real estate news collected from around the web:

• Morgan Stanley Finds Opportunity in Distressed Property Assets

  Distressed property markets where deals are difficult to finance and yield spreads are at all-time highs provide attractive investment opportunities, according to Morgan Stanley’s real estate unit. In the Asia-Pacific region, Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing is most focused on China, India, Australia and Japan, said Olivier de Poulpiquet, who helps oversee $36 billion in real estate assets as the global co-head for the unit. In India and China, demand is driven by strong demographic trends amid a dearth of financing, while in Australia and Japan, low borrowing costs are providing opportunities, he said.

• Shanghai real estate investment reaches RMB 238 bil in 2012

  Investment in real estate development reached 238 billion yuan ($38.2 billion) in Shanghai in 2012, a 9.7 percent year-on-year increase, according to a Jan 21 report from the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau. In 2012, newly developed commodity real estate in Shanghai reached 27.2 million square meters, a 25.2 percent year-on-year decrease, among which 15.6 million sq m was for housing, a 36.8 percent year-on-year decrease.

• Bond Investors Get a ‘Perpetual’ Headache

  Asia’s booming bond market may have reached the limits of what investors will buy, as some of the riskiest debt struggles to sell. Issuance of so-called perpetual bonds, which pay a high coupon but have no maturity date, hit a record in Asia last year, but as the type of borrowers extends to weaker-quality firms, potential buyers have begun pushing back on such debt.

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