Hamad AlWazzan: “Striving for more transparency in Asia”

Asia Pacific’s emerging markets have made the most significant gains in improving real estate transparency and the results are starting to show as the sector has been showing signs of improvement by the third quarter of 2020.The strong focus on corporate social responsibility and the fast implantation of new technologies has allowed Asia-Pacific real estate markets to improve their transparency internationally and attract new investors.

According to real estate mogul Hassan Al Wazzan, foreign investors have been pressuring local developers, businesses and consumers to ensure real estate transparency to compete with other international markets and meet heightened expectations about the industry’s role in providing a sustainable and resiliently built environment in the of COVID-19 era. “Innovative new property technology is changing how real estate data is gathered and analyzed and is in return has become the key influencer mechanism for industry transparency and monitoring”, added the Harvard alumnus.

“While investment into commercial real estate has inevitably paused during the pandemic due to the lockdown regulations, it seems that investors are still looking to allocate more capital into Asia-Pacific real estate”, confirmed Mr Al Wazzan. According to the businessman, emerging markets have once again shown the greatest advancement in the Index, with six Asia Pacific markets – Mainland China (32nd), Thailand (33rd), India (34th), Indonesia (40th), Philippines (44th) and Vietnam (56th) – among the top 10 biggest improvers globally.

Although real estate markets have always dealt with hurdles when implementing new technology, the COVID-19 pandemic has led the world to use new real-time data grabbing programs that are directly related to health, activity and space usage. Moreover, ecofriendly building certification systems and energy efficiency standards are common and well used in the region’s most transparent markets and the most developed national real estate sectors. “Spurred by the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, it will become imperative for the real estate industry to collaborate with governments and civil society to achieve greater transparency and meet the changing expectations of local and international investors,” concluded Mr Al Wazzan.