Asia’s sheer size — in land and population — dwarfs the world’s other regions. With 3.7 billion residents, Asia accounts for 57 percent of global population. That share will drop to 55 percent by 2030, according to United Nations projections, but the continent will still capture half of earth’s population growth between now and then. In terms of future real estate demand, population expansion provides an important underpinning, but two other demographic trends are equally beneficial: strong urbanization patterns and rapidly expanding middle classes. Every household moving from the country to a city needs shelter, and Asia’s demand for both affordable and workforce housing is insatiable.

Anthony Frammartino is a principal with The Townsend Group, a U.S.-based global institutional real estate consulting services firm founded in 1983. Frammartino recently spoke with The Institutional Real Estate Letter – Asia Pacific editor Jennifer Molloy about how his firm’s clients are being impacted by the global financial crisis.

Last year was the worst year of performance in the history of global real estate securities — and one of the worst years in broad-market indices. In addition to poor performance, 2008 also marked a period of unprecedented stock market volatility for both real estate and broad-market stocks. For the year, global real estate stocks in the UBS Investors Index were down 42.6 percent, compared with a decline of 38.3 percent for the MSCI World Equity Index.