With a modest loss for the month of August (–0.9 percent), Asia Pacific real estate stocks broke a streak of six consecutive months of positive returns as the region’s developers underperformed due to macro-economic concerns and a general preference for yield-oriented investments within a perennially low interest rate environment. As such, REITs substantially outperformed developers in Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore, as well as globally, in August. According to SNL Financial (with regional returns denominated back to US dollars and country returns in local currency), the region has now returned 10.3 percent in 2014, trailing global real estate stocks at 13.5 percent.

While there was strength across REITs in August with the three major REIT markets all posting positive returns (Hong Kong, 3.3 percent; Japan, 2.8 percent; Singapore, 0.4 percent), the weakness among the region’s developers dragged down the SNL country indices into negati