Knowledge Hub

The commercialisation of the property management industry in China started in 1981 with the incorporation of China’s first property management company managing a residential property in Shenzhen. In the subsequent ten years, residential property management continued to mature with the eventual establishment of the Shenzhen Real Estate Management Bureau in 1985. One of the first Grade A office buildings to be professionally managed was the Guangzhou World Trade Centre in 1992, where it was co-managed by Savills and Guangzhou Pearl River Hotel Management. In the early days of property management in China, the sector remained immensely scattered and only basic property management services were provided. The China Property Management Association was eventually established in 2000, with the first nationwide property management regulations issued in 2003. As the property management sector continued to grow, local governments set standards for the market, requiring firms to obtain operation licenses and setting residential property management fee caps.

The industry started to undergo greater liberalisation in 2014-2016, with property managers no longer required to obtain the national ‘Certified Property Manager’ qualification license and commodity housing management fees caps removed and instead set by market forces. In more recent years, property managers have started providing value-added services (VAS) to boost revenues and profit margins. At the same time, many developers have spun off property management divisions in separate listings, with many of them given the mandate to aggressively expand market share, often through mergers and acquisitions. The property management industry is now also taking on a broader range of property types. In addition to the more standard commercial and residential developments, firms are be contracted for work at schools, hospitals, airports, sports stadiums and public utilities, to name just a few.

Occupiers adopt remote-working concept

At the end of the first quarter of 2020, the country was forced to go into a complete lockdown of business activity due to the pandemic.In March 2020, workplaces were shut, and employees were working from home for the first few weeks. By May 2020, while workplaces had begun to re-open partially with easing lockdown restrictions, not all companies were asking their employees to return to office. Further, we are still witnessing a large proportion of employees working from home. The trend of ‘Work-from-home’ and ‘Work-from-anywhere’ has gained significance thereafter and occupiers have displayed openness to remote working. The poll results suggest that a majority (60%) of occupiers foresee about 21% to 40% of their workforce to be working from a non-office location over the next 12-24 months. However, as occupiers are revisiting their density plans in existing offices to enable a safe return for employees, we expect a gradual revival of the sector and office absorption should start showing signs of recovery in H2 2021. We believe that occupiers will likely resort to a ‘hub & spoke’ model, offering flexibility to employees to work from anywhere or near clients. Hence, the indications are that flexible workspaces will likely gain significance in such a scenario.

A GOOD START TO A YEAR OF EXPECTED ECONOMIC RECOVERY

• With the economy on the mend with positive news from the vaccine distribution, controlled easing of travel restrictions as well as the return of workers to their workplaces, investment sales activity picked up in the first quarter of the year, with the residential sector leading the string of deals. Investment deals amounted to some S$3.8 billion in Q1 2021, representing an uptick of 26.7% year-on-year (y-o-y) from S$3.0 billion in Q1 2020.

• The residential sector retained momentum with some S$1.7 billion of investment deals at the start of 2021. The Good Class Bungalow (GCB) segment continued to draw strong interest due to its rarified and coveted status, as well as the entry of more family offices setting up in Singapore. The sale of a GCB at Nassim Road for S$128.8 million or S$4,005 per square foot (psf) on land in late March broke all previous sales records from this asset class. At the same time, developers were beginning to replenish their land banks through partnerships.

MANUFACTURING DRIVES INDUSTRIAL SECTOR REBOUND

• According to the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI), Singapore’s economy contracted by 2.4% year-on-year (y-o-y) in Q4 2020, bringing the total change in the overall economic growth in 2020 to a negative 5.4%. In a COVID-19 year, the resilient manufacturing sector played a huge role in cushioning the fallout on the economy, with substantial output expansions in the electronics, biomedical manufacturing and precision engineering clusters.

• Demand for electronics remains high due to the current global chip shortage. And with Singapore as a major manufacturer of semiconductors, chipmakers in the industrial sector may be compelled to expand existing facilities in order to increase output production.

• In March 2021, the Singapore Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) reported an expansion of 50.8, the highest since March 2019. The optimism among manufacturers prevailed in January and February where the PMI expanded by 50.7 and 50.5 respectively, indicating that the industrial sector is likely to see continued growth in 2021.