Supply shortages in a number of commercial markets around the world mean that there are a number of reasons to invest in the sector at present.
As such, Jones Lang LaSalle has forecast that there will be a further USD 290-310 billion in direct commercial real estate investment transactions for the remainder of this year. This will be added to the USD 90 billion which has already been spent in quarter one of 2011.
Paul Guest, Jones Lang LaSalle's global capital markets research director, explained that there are a number of "sound reasons" for investors to be looking at the opportunities found within the commercial property sector.
"Its perceived inflation hedge, supply shortages in many gateway markets, appealing risk-adjusted returns when compared to more volatile assets, still-attractive pricing outside some of the prime markets which corrected earliest and even a pick-up in both debt issuance and securitisation," he explained.
Meanwhile, recent research from CB Richard Ellis has suggested that property investors are increasingly eying up riskier markets as fierce competition for commercial real estate in more stable countries pushes up prices and investment volumes.