With luck, the year 2021 will not be remembered much. And that is the good news for Asia Pacific institutional property investors. Gashing its mark in history, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 made misery for citizens and investors alike, wrecking lives and economies with unexpected tenacity.

In this environment, in which elevated uncertainty alone is combined with record-high prices of financial assets, real estate appears to represent an important asset class for institutional investors. The key question on the minds of the groups we advise is not if they should invest in real estate, but how they should construct their portfolios and manage risk.

Predicting the future of work is no easy task. While we can often identify the forces that might shape our future, it is difficult to estimate the speed with which they might take effect. COVID-19 has been a stark reminder of this.