Introduction:

The second AsiaConference took place on 2 and 3 June 2026 at the Hilton City Centre in Frankfurt. As the European community for APAC real estate investments, it again drew institutional investors, fund managers and advisors for two days of macro context, market deep-dives and strategy debate across the region’s key markets: Australia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, China and India. An opening sentiment survey set the tone, confirming strong appetite for information and that nearly all investors are planning APAC commitments in 2026 or 2027, with a focus on both new opportunities and diversification.

First conference day:

Conference chairmen Dr. Karsten Lieser and Jun Ho Lee, together with initiator Oliver Strumpf, opened the day. Ann-Katrin Petersen set the macro frame around two structural drivers: geopolitical fragmentation, where supply rather than demand shapes economies organised around strategic autonomy, and the AI buildout, whose potential she argued could lift growth above the historic 2% rate; tariffs, regulation and the low-carbon transition were named as further forces. David Fassbender called APAC selective, favouring rental growth paired with yield compression and momentum in CBD offices, necessity retail and hotels. A panel of David Chen, Jason Leong and John Saunders saw the region’s diversity as a key advantage amid global turbulence, while cautioning that it stays fragmented, with capital mainly in liquid markets and China and India contested; they pointed to high-end logistics, living and data-centre-adjacent assets as the likely core. On capital, Eduardo Gorab stressed the need to lean on GPs’ local expertise; Gweyn Foo and Susanne Pamin traced international capital flows into different markets and sectors, highlighting how opportunities are shaped by the working generation in APAC; and Felix Frankl, Benedikt Gabor and Sven Schaltegger, moderated by Bernhard Karas, confirmed that LPs stay invested for diversification potential, prizing best-in-class operators and the case for real estate debt. In the market deep-dives, Kevin Chee highlighted Japan’s favourable rent-to-wage ratio and record-low office vacancies, Australia’s retail strength and a rebalancing Greater Seoul logistics market; Chedli Boujellabia described Japan’s lagging cycle and housing undersupply; Broderick Storie made the case for resilient APAC offices and the primacy of local over macro, favouring Japan as an income engine, Korea and Singapore as landlord markets and Australia and New Zealand as tougher entries; and David Matheson framed logistics in the region as a beneficiary of AI and of re- and near-shoring. Closing the day, Ben Hickey saw early-mover returns in self-storage and life-science labs, Milan Khatri pointed to attractive, long-lease yields in aged care and childcare, and a living panel of Chedli Boujellabia, Sam McConnell and Irene Shimada, moderated by Ronald Bausch, contrasted stable, landlord-friendly Japanese residential with a fast-growing but still-maturing Australian build-to-rent market. After a short break and face-to-face meetings as part of the programme, attendees and speakers closed the first conference day with a dinner at the Occhio D’Oro in Frankfurt.

Second conference day:

Dr. Karsten Lieser and Jun Ho Lee opened the second day. Marco Simonis starts with his contribution on choosing the right investment structure. A panel of Ben Taylor, Paul Keogh and Jason Leong made the case for core diversified strategies, framing Asia as a heterogeneous region rather than a single market and arguing that sector-only liquidity concerns can be managed by concentrating on liquid assets while diversification cushions global stress; asked whether an Asia core fund still qualifies without China, they were emphatic that it does, since Australia, Korea, Singapore and Japan have essentially caught up, naming Japanese residential for stability, Sydney prime office for opportunity and Australian residential for rental-growth potential as their picks. Alexander Hoffmann presented secondaries as a niche that provides liquidity to distressed or locked positions on both sides, with an Asian market that remains undercapitalised, attractively priced and set to grow. An experiences panel of Dr. Sabine Schaffer, Broderick Storie and Ryota Nagao moderated by Jun Ho Lee described Japan as one of the hardest markets to enter – relationship-driven and demanding local, vertical integration though highly liquid – while Australian residential remains uninstitutionalised. Looking ahead, Joe Gagnon argued that gaps in APAC’s public real estate platforms create room for platform approaches on local management; and a closing panel of David Fassbender, Eduardo Gorab, Pierre-Alexandre Humblot and John Saunders pointed to rental growth, hard-to-institutionalise niche sectors, logistics bifurcating toward urban multi-tenant assets, and foreign currencies as additional levers, framing tariffs as a force that also localises business, before each named their three strongest sectors per market. The chairmen then closed the official part of the conference, inviting attendees and speakers to the adjacent networking lunch.