ln July 2020, an interview was conducted with experts in real estate around the world to assess the effect of Covid-19 to our real estate markets.  Their view would be beneficial for our planning in real estate investments in the near future.

Dr.Sopon Pornchokchai, President, Agency for Real Estate Affairs (www.area.co.th) and President, FIABCI-Thai conducted an interview to almost 200 real estate experts around the world to  assess the impact of Covid-19 to property markets.  Experts came from 33 countries, namely, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, China, Dominican Republic, Georgia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Laos, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, Palestine, Panama, Philippines, Qatar, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Swizerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Uganda, Ukraine and USA who were in 95 cities.

These experts are in a diversity including appraisers/valuers (24.4%), agents/brokers (21.9%), developers (12.5%), property investors (12.5%), builders/contractors, academicians (5%) financiers (2.2%), government officers (1.9%) and  other property consultants (14.1%).  Therefore, their comments would be of interest in the future of our property markets after Covid-19.

As for an overall assessment, property markets as a whole would be down for some 10.4%.  The most  negatively affected sectors are those hotels (22.3% down), resort properties (19.8% down) followed by shopping centres (17.8% down) and office spaces (16% down).  Covid-19 did not affect much to other sectors particularly agricultural land, owner-occupied low-rise residential properties and the like.  Condominiums and rental apartments had some slightly effects for 6.4% and 7% respectively.

 

There were only 3.5% of these experts expecting that the recovery of Covid-19 would be in 2020.  The largest proportion of them (46.2%) expected that the recovery would be in 2022.  On the average, 2022 would be the year of full recovery.  This is another two years to go which would be quite long.  It implies that our experts were somewhat pessimistic to the negative effects of Covid-19 to property markets.

China would fully recover within 2020 followed by Argentina, Belgium, Canada.  Those expected to be recovered, were Austria, Japan, Kenya, Laos  and Switzerland.  It was very amazing that China which was the origin of this Covid-19 could recover soonest.  China would become economic imperialism country in the world soon.

Detailed interviews of these experts were shown at the following link: https://www.fiabci-thai.org/en/qa_list.php