The once tried-and-true office sector saw tremendous challenges worldwide throughout the pandemic, with fits and starts as businesses more recently have attempted to lure back employees who had grown accustomed to working from home.

Investment in the office sector globally was addressed in a recent virtual roundtable with institutional investors and investment managers. The in-depth strategy session, hosted by Institutional Real Estate, Inc, was moderated by Reno Sio, managing director, Asia Pacific, at IREI.

Key takeaways

Even prior to COVID-19, some investors had been reducing their office allocations because they were seeing increasingly high capital expenditure going into buildings, and that real cash-on-cash yields were coming down significantly. But investors still see allocations to the office sector as a natural diversifier and long-term staple of their portfolios. And some investors hold the view that acquiring office assets now â