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In the search for returns, investors looking at Southeast Asia are turning to value-add and core assets, even though there are some who are starting to look at distressed assets. Industrial/logistics and office remain their preferred sectors, while the hospitality sector is gaining favour. This infographic looks at key findings from the survey. 

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The pandemic has induced behavioural changes amongst consumers that are likely to stay permanent. This has hit the physical retail and F&B sectors hardest and the industry has to be quick to adapt to this new reality in order to nurture the sector back to recovery, albeit in an evolved form.

Footfall numbers will be hard-pressed to return to pre-COVID levels so long as the need to social distance is enforced. The takeaway channel is therefore vital. With incomes falling and unemployment rising, food delivery companies are seeing a decline in activity from the peaks witnessed in the months of April and May. Parents are telling their children now not to order frivolously. Footfall ebbs and flows with some days seeing much greater activity than others (same as our office – some days we have 30% of the workers back while for most of the time, it’s just 15% to 20%). It is difficult to predict the daily flow these days. Whenever helicopter money is disbursed by the government, the crowd emerges in the suburbs. But give it about 10 days and the patronage falls back to pre-payout levels.

The points highlighted above are summarised in the following heatmaps. Table 1A and 1B show the heatmap of revenues by broad tenant types in CBD and Suburban locations. These are the findings obtained after spending weeks soliciting feedback from various retail and F&B operators plus plying the grounds to weed off the weekend-weekday effects.

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WHEN CULTURAL VALUE BECOMES COMMERCIAL VALUE AND TRANSFORMS INTO INVESTMENT GAINS.

• The total shophouse transaction value amounted to S$880.7 million in 2020, riding out the pandemic with only a slight 3.8% year-on-year (y-o-y) decline when compared to the S$915.9 million recorded in 2019, as sales in Q4 2020 rebounded to surpass pre-pandemic levels. Gross sales value in the quarter alone accounted for almost half of 2020 shophouse sales value at S$431.8 million.
• The shophouse sales volume was also greater in 2020 compared to the previous year, with 138 transactions lodged as compared to 123 in 2019 (Exhibit 1). The majority (88.4%) sold were freehold shophouses. Q4 2020 saw a total of 51 shophouse transactions, 19 more than in Q3 when sales started to recover.
• Aided by lower costs of borrowing and high liquidity in the market, pent-up demand from different pools of buyers such as first-time investors as well as family offices and corporates contributed to the overall recovery of the shophouse market, especially towards the last quarter of the year. Price expectations between buyers and sellers were realistically met, leading to the materialisation of sales.

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