It has been a mostly blithe decade for Asia Pacific commercial property since the global financial crisis, as rising prices and compressing capitalisation rates — which have moved inversely to record-high and -low levels, respectively — have become the norm.

This late in the cycle, it is normal for investors to get more anxious, wondering whether the markets have finally peaked and, if so, how they should react. And like their equity market counterparts, property investors are increasingly skittish over trade war concerns, rising interest rates and tighter access to credit. But investors still report increasing amounts of capital allocated to property, particularly as Japanese pension funds follow the lead of the nation’s ¥165.6 trillion (US$1.5 trillion) Government Pension Investment Fund — which awarded its first mandate for global real estate investment in September 2018 — driven, like many institutional investors, by the search for yield.

Naturally, in a