National Real Estate Advisor
By Beth Mattson-Teig| Nov 07, 2018

Despite a pullback in buying from Chinese investors, 2018 is on pace to deliver what could be a record high year of foreign investment sales in the current cycle.

According to New York City-based research firm Real Capital Analytics (RCA), cross-border investment sales topped $62.7 billion year-to-date through third quarter—a 56 percent spike compared to the same period in 2017 and even edging past robust sales of $60.3 billion during the first three quarters of 2015, which set a high watermark for foreign investment activity to date. This has been a big year for mega-deals involving foreign buyers, including Toronto-based Brookfield Property Partners' $15 billion takeover of mall REIT GGP and the Unibail-Rodamco acquisition of Westfield that accounted for $7.7 billion of U.S. transaction volume. However, even without those large entity-level deals, there continues to be a steady pipeline of buying fueled by international capital. Read more.