A Bird’s Eye View of Global Real Estate Markets: 2010 Update

We update our estimates of the size and growth potential for commercial real estate markets in our 55-country universe.

Executive Summary

Pramerica Real Estate Investor’s global universe of commercial real estate markets – some 55 developed and developing countries – shrunk to .3 trillion in 2009, from .5 trillion a year earlier. The decline in value was largely caused by the global recession.
The distribution of real estate between the developed and developing countries is uneven. However, the gap is shrinking because developing countries are growing faster than developed nations. Developed countries currently account for 81% of the commercial real estate universe, but that proportion is expected to shrink to 66% by 2019.
Similarly, our universe is top-heavy. Currently, the top 10 countries, which represent a mix of developed and developing countries, represents 74% of global commercial real estate.
By region, Europe is the largest, accounting for 38% of global real estate, followed by the U.S./Canada (31%), Asia Pacific (24%), Latin America (5%) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (2%).
China and the U.S. are expected to be the dominant contributors to global real estate growth over the next decade due to the rapid growth in China and the large size of the commercial real estate market in the U.S.