Realty firm Knight Frank bullish about China market

Optimistic about the growth and resilience of China's real estate market, London-based real estate consultancy Knight Frank will keep investing in the country, said a senior executive of the company.

When asked to choose one word to represent his outlook for China's real estate market, Paul Fisher, who took office as the CEO of Knight Frank Greater China earlier this month, chose "committed".

He said China is a unique market due to the competitiveness, size and scale of the economy, with a population of 1.4 billion people and GDP of $18 trillion.

"As a result of that, there are all sorts of benefits, including a huge talent pool, and successful Chinese companies that are now going global, such as technology companies, automobile companies and telecom companies."

Fisher took the reins for Knight Frank Greater China on May 12. He said, "We are very committed to the Chinese market for the long run."

When asked to elaborate on the reason behind that commitment, Fisher said, "For a global organization, you have to be present in China. China is the second-largest economy in the world, no multinational corporation will miss this market. There's a lot of business to be done."

Speaking of China's business environment for multinational corporations, he said that government policies serve as a big driver of boosting domestic demand, as well as supporting businesses.

The dual-circulation economic strategy, in which domestic and overseas markets reinforce each other, with the domestic market as the mainstay, offers the country a delicate balance between globalization and localization.

"China is growing and developing in a positive direction," Fisher said.

This year, the government has launched a series of measures to expand domestic demand, as well as established and improved a long-term mechanism for expanding consumption, so that residents can consume with the help of stable incomes.

Meanwhile, the government has been actively optimizing the business environment for MNCs, by launching policies to expand market access, increase policy efforts, optimize fair competition environment, facilitate the flow of innovative factors, improve domestic regulations, consolidate the confidence of foreign investment in China's development and enhance the quality and level of trade and investment cooperation.

Although China's prime office markets face headwinds and downward pressures, Knight Frank still sees resilience in key sub-markets like Shanghai's Lujiazui and Beijing's Zhongguancun, with relatively high occupancy rates.

"There is certainly pressure of values, but the decline also created opportunities in the market. There are opportunities for tenants to improve their working environments, move into higher-quality spaces and provide better workplaces for their employees," Fisher said.

In addition, Knight Frank also sees strong demand coming from technology, manufacturing and financial service sectors. "These sectors have demonstrated strong resilience during this economic time period."

Yu Fenghui, a special researcher at China Finance Think Tank, said: "Although there is a certain rental decline in first-tier cities, bringing pressure to landlords, tenants are offered more choice in terms of space, which is beneficial to attracting and retaining talents to contribute to the sustainable development of related industries.

"Under the current complicated market situation, China's real estate market remains resilient as it stabilizes internal demand, while offering strong support to industries such as technology, manufacturing and financial services. The Chinese government's regulatory measures on the real estate market also demonstrate its ability to maintain market stability. In the long run, with the continued advancement of urbanization and the optimization and upgrading of economic structure, the Chinese real estate market is expected to maintain a stable development trend and show a bright future," he said.

"We are committed to the Chinese market in the long run, and we will definitely increase investment in the market. Specifically, we will invest in growing our teams in China. The market is really what we want to double down on," said Fisher.