Global Wealthy Want More Real Estate

Wealthy investors around the world crave real estate.

A new Savills/Wealth Briefing survey of private bankers and wealth managers found that 91% of global high-net-worth investors were looking to increase or maintain the real estate holdings they own directly, and 87% intended to increase or maintain indirect holdings.

“Land and real estate has historically been a key measure of wealth, and is often the first asset that people acquire with surplus capital, a trend that has become increasingly prevalent among the wealth generators from the new world economies,” Yolande Barnes, Savills’ director of world research, said in a statement.

The survey found this true across global regions and a wide spectrum of real estate types.

Seventy-two percent of wealth managers said their clients would buy residential properties over the next five years, 60% listed development land and 50% said they would buy offices. Less appealing were retail investments, noted by 44% of respondents.

North America was the choice investment destination of investors, according to 67% of wealth management respondents, followed by 63% for the U.K. and 58% for both Pacific Asia and the South Asian Subcontinent.

In contrast, only 43% of wealth managers said Latin America was attractive to their clients, 38% pointed to Eastern Europe and former Soviet bloc countries as desirable destinations for investment, and 37% listed China and Hong Kong.