Shanghai’s real estate market is bucking trends in global property sales

China’s economy has just grown at its weakest quarterly pace since the early 1990s, while trade negotiations with Washington are plainly failing to make any meaningful headway. Yet, in the commercial real estate market, the world’s second-largest economy is performing remarkably well. In the first quarter of this year, transaction volumes in China surged to a quarterly all-time high of US$17 billion, fuelling a 14 per cent rise in investment activity in the Asia-Pacific region as a whole amid a decline in sales in Europe and the Americas, according to data from Jones Lang LaSalle, a property adviser. Shanghai was the stand-out performer. Not only did the city account for 37 per cent of commercial property deals in mainland China, it moved up the league table to become the world’s second most actively traded commercial real estate market after Tokyo and the second-biggest recipient of cross-border investment after London, data from JLL reveals.