Investors Home In on Singapore and Hong Kong as Apac Living Sector Investment Surges 38% to US$13.8 Billion

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, now ranks Japan and Singapore as Apac’s two most compelling living-sector markets, where it believes investors can generate attractive yields without significant planning or development risk.

“Japan offers established scale and defensive income, while Singapore offers a smaller but fast-institutionalising market with attractive value-add potential,” said Hamish Macdonald, head and chief investment officer of Asia-Pacific real estate at BlackRock.

Prudential’s asset management business PGIM has deployed US$1.85 billion into Apac living-sector investments, with more than half invested in key markets including Australia, Japan and Singapore. The sector accounted for 60 per cent of its acquisitions and lending activity in 2025. The living sector makes up about 23 per cent of PGIM’s global real estate portfolio, at more than US$50 billion.

Strong investor demand for established segments such as Japan multifamily and Australian student accommodation has driven pricing higher and compressed yields. For value-add and opportunistic capital, the focus is increasingly shifting towards identifying the next living subsectors within each market to institutionalise, said Suchad Chiaranussati, chairman and founder of real estate investment firm SC Capital Partners.

For student accommodation and co-living, the most attractive markets typically combine housing affordability challenges with a stable or growing younger population, said David Fassbender, PGIM’s head of Asia-Pacific real estate. “Singapore and Hong Kong have many of these characteristics,” he added.

Singapore’s co-living room inventory grew 17 per cent between 2023 and 2025, mainly through adaptive reuse and conversion of existing assets. Living was the only real estate sector to see investment volume grow through both the Covid-19 pandemic and the global rate-hiking cycle from 2022 to 2024.

While Japan’s multifamily sector has long dominated Apac living investment, its share of investment volume has fallen from around 75 per cent in 2019 to about 50 per cent in 2025, as capital moved into Australia’s build-to-rent and purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) markets and Singapore’s co-living segment.

“Rental growth has also consistently outpaced both inflation and interest rates, preserving real income while maintaining a positive spread over financing costs,” the CLI report said. The living sector posted gains of 51 per cent and 18 per cent respectively as office and retail volumes tumbled during the same period.

“A number of Asia-Pacific living segments now offer transparency, scalability and operating depth. This is creating a broader investable universe for global capital,” said Rahul Bharara, CLI’s global head of lodging and living.