Asia Pacific’s commercial real estate markets kept their momentum into the second quarter of 2026. Despite a nervy start to the year with the outbreak of the US-Iran war and resurgent borrowing costs, aggregate deal volumes continued their upward trajectory, growing 20 percent year-on-year to reach US$46.1 billion in the second quarter.
There was broad-based growth in activity across most major sectors and markets. Although already rising interest rates in Japan and Australia were hiked further in the second quarter, they still posted respectable levels of deal activity, with Japan enduring only a shallow decline while Australia flipped into a year-on-year gain. Chinese and Hong Kong markets continued to reawaken in 2026 and are now belatedly but firmly in recovery mode.
