Three Australian cities – Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane – feature in the Top 15 most transparent real estate markets in the world in JLL’s new City Transparency Report analysing 158 cities.
Sydney is ranked third in the world, followed by Melbourne in seventh spot and Brisbane in 15th. By country rankings, Australia has been consistently rated in the top two globally.
JLL and LaSalle’s Global Real Estate Transparency Index, which has tracked the evolution of real estate transparency for two decades, has been expanded to cover 158 metropolitan areas across the globe.
In the inaugural City Transparency Index, London comes in at number one, with Los Angeles, Sydney, San Francisco and New York City rounding out the top five.
According to Stephen Conry, JLL Australia’s chief executive officer, Australia’s ranking demonstrates investor interest.
“Australia shows among the lowest differences in transparency levels between cities compared to other leading investment destinations such as US, France, and Japan.
“We see a strong relationship between transparency and cross-border investment activity. New investment mandates into Australia from cross-border investors typically specify Sydney and Melbourne as their preferred destination with Brisbane increasingly identified as a market on the cusp of a cyclical recovery.”
JLL’s figures show that offshore investment into office, retail and industrial real estate in the three states has totalled $5.1 billion in the first nine months of the year, compared to $5.73 billion across all of Australia.
“For Queensland, the offshore proportion of total investment has been high at 46.3 per cent and New South Wales and Victoria are both at about 25 per cent,” Conry adds.
Andrew Ballantyne, JLL’s head of research for Australia says several pan-Asian funds have high allocations to Australia.
“However, investment opportunities are limited in Sydney and Melbourne and investors want a deeper understanding of markets like Brisbane. We believe that an increasing number of investors will also explore opportunities in Perth, Adelaide and Canberra over 2019.”