Singapore is gaining as a global capital hub despite tariff turbulence and a persistent price gap pressuring the local real estate market, according to experts who spoke at Mingtiandi’s forum in the city-state on Tuesday.
The Yardi-sponsored event brought together top executives from property services firm Savills, real estate investment platform Fraxtor, industrial specialist ESR and the Singapore Exchange for a discussion moderated by Jason Chan, director for fund solutions with businesses provider Vistra, on the challenges facing the Little Red Dot and its trade-dependent economy under the new tariff regime.
After a stubborn price gap ensured that the city’s private real estate investment volume was lower than expected last year, the Trump tariff turmoil has made property investors even more cautious, said Jeremy Lake, managing director of the investment sales and capital markets team at Savills Singapore.
“What I think may happen is that some sellers will become impatient,” Lake told the audience of over 250 executives in Singapore. “My view is that the price gap will be partly overcome by some sellers willing to accept a smaller profit, and this may be in response to their LP saying time is up. Time is IRR, let’s recycle the money.”
Uncertain Times
The level of uncertainty in the current climate is the highest of the last 30 years outside of the global financial crisis and the COVID pandemic, according to Samuel Lee, who heads Fraxtor, a platform that lets investors buy tokenised real estate assets and projects.
Fraxtor’s Samuel Lee speaks at the Mingtiandi Singapore Forum
“We do foresee some slowdown in dealmaking, some smaller deal sizes, scaling back of investments and also more diversification,” Lee said.
In 2024 the hospitality space grabbed investor attention, he noted, but this year has seen the spotlight shift to digital infrastructure.
“A lot of them have moved their focus into the data centre space,” Lee said. “In fact, that was one of the top topics for this year, and we continue to have these conversations with them. Obviously data centre is backed by strong structural tailwinds.”
In response to a question from Vistra’s Chan, Ronald Tan, senior vice president of capital markets, global sales and origination at the SGX, pointed to Singapore’s growing role as a hub for family offices, many of which have served as cornerstone investors in the exchange’s REIT IPOs and could also provide a foundation for other equity types like listed closed-end funds.
“We could potentially offer even infrastructure funds as well as funds of funds,” he said. “You can say to all the family offices, whatever you want is on the platform. So one platform can serve all your needs.”
Deals Getting Done
ESR chief investment officer Josh Daitch got the chance to talk up an actual deal to the crowd at the Conrad Singapore Marina Bay, with the Hong Kong-listed group having just broken ground on a multi-storey warehouse and automated container depot in the city-state’s Jurong area alongside a quintet of Japanese co-investors.
“It’s evidence that deals are getting done,” Daitch said. “The Sunview Logistics & Container Hub in Jurong is about a 143,000 square metre (1.5 million square foot) facility. And I think the attractiveness in relation to Singaporean logistics infrastructure is really about the Tuas Megaport.”
He predicted that the Tuas project in western Singapore, to be constructed in stages until 2040, could eventually become the biggest port in the world.
A Panel in Pictures
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