AIAIG Overseas Real Estate Investment Weekly Report | 2025 Week 47 (Part 2): Global Housing Price Trends, Rental Yield, and Investment Strategy Analysis - AIAIG

This is the "Part 2: Trends" of the AIAIG Overseas Real Estate Investment Weekly Report for Week 47 of 2025.

Unlike the "Policies and Regulations" in Part 1, this part focuses on:

  • The actual performance and direction of housing prices and rents this week;
  • Changes in the prosperity of different types of assets (residential, apartments, hotels, long-term rentals);
  • Shifts in preferences between institutional and individual investors;
  • The impact of emerging investment models (such as asset tokenization) on traditional home-buying logic.

Overall, the global real estate market remains in a pattern of "inventory era + high interest rate tail": the traditional "pure price increase logic" is gradually failing, and more and more funds are being allocated around "cash flow, resilience, and thematic investment."

1. Vietnam: Hotel and Tourism Real Estate Investment Shows Significant Recovery, Returns Return to Attractive Range

The "2025 Vietnam Hotel Investment Guide" released this week shows that with the recovery of international tourists and the improvement in administrative approval efficiency, Vietnam's hotel sector is once again attracting the attention of domestic and foreign investors. The operating yields of hotels in many areas have returned to relatively attractive levels within the region, with high-quality hotel assets in some key cities being regarded as targets that "combine stable cash flow with long-term appreciation potential." Against this backdrop, hotel apartments, serviced apartments, and vacation properties with hotel operation management have re-entered the watchlists of institutions and high-net-worth individuals: • Business hotels in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City benefit from the recovery of business and exhibition activities, with occupancy rates and average room rates continuously improving; • Coastal cities such as Da Nang and Nha Trang perform prominently in the vacation and family travel sectors, with peak seasons arriving earlier and off-seasons shortening; • Some new projects enhance pricing and rental capabilities by introducing international hotel management brands, making them more attractive to overseas owners. Combined with the price and tax system reforms mentioned in the previous article, it can be foreseen that Vietnam's "operable assets" will have more systematic advantages than purely held residential properties in the coming years.

The biggest difference is that residential properties' returns come more from price appreciation and long-term rentals, while hotels and resort properties rely more on actual operational capabilities and tourism demand. Several current trends are worth noting:

• Tourism demand: With improved entry-exit convenience and optimized visa policies, short- to medium-haul tourism (e.g., from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan China, and intra-ASEAN tourists) has become a new underlying demand for Vietnam's coastal towns.
• Operational specialization: Whether a project can introduce established hotel brands and whether the management company has the ability to optimize revenue will directly impact investment returns.
• Taxation and regulation: Compared to residential properties, hotel assets have higher requirements in terms of taxes, business licenses, fire and safety standards, and compliance costs are also higher.

Therefore, it is more reasonable to view hotels and tourism properties as 'quasi-corporate assets,' prioritizing the examination of the operational team and brand, rather than just location and unit price.

II. Thailand and Phuket: Tourism Recovery Supports, Property Prices Steadily Operating at High Levels

Thailand's overall real estate market is entering a phase of 'low base rebound + structural differentiation' in 2025. Previous research reports indicate that national property transactions in 2025 are expected to increase by about 3% compared to 2024, driving the total transaction value to exceed 1 trillion Thai baht, with significant contributions from resort cities such as Phuket and Pattaya. In Phuket: • Prices of mid-to-high-end sea-view apartments and villas remain high, with some projects reaching the range of hundreds of thousands to over a million US dollars per unit; • Among foreign buyers, European and Russian buyers account for a relatively high proportion, while the share of Chinese buyers is still in the process of recovery; • New development land is limited, and prime plots increasingly rely on the renovation of old hotels or the redevelopment of old projects, pushing up the unit land cost. In Bangkok: • Rents for premium condominiums in the city center are still rising moderately, with vacancy rates declining; • Large-scale projects in the suburbs continue to attract first-time buyers through price promotions and installment payments; • Government-driven infrastructure and transportation projects (such as rail transit extensions and the Eastern Economic Corridor) provide medium- to long-term uplift expectations for some areas. This week, there were no new data showing 'significant fluctuations' in the market, but opinions from institutions and the media generally believe that Thailand's real estate has gradually moved from the post-pandemic 'recovery phase' into a relatively mature phase of 'slow growth + high differentiation'.

Three, Japan: Second-hand and Rental Markets Remain Stable, Yields Slightly Decline

The Japanese residential market in 2025 exhibits characteristics of 'stable volume with rising prices and slowly declining yields': • The average price of apartments in the capital region has significantly increased in 2025 compared to 2023, with the price gap between new homes and high-quality second-hand homes widening; • The transaction volume of second-hand homes remains at a relatively high historical level, indicating a certain consensus between buyers and sellers on the current price range; • In the rental market, rents for single-person apartments and family apartments in Tokyo's core areas have increased year-on-year by 3%–5%. Affected by rising prices, the overall gross yield of Japanese residential properties has slightly declined compared to previous years. However, due to relatively low financing costs, controllable vacancy rates, and stable tenants, it still holds strong appeal for investors seeking stable cash flow. For foreign buyers, Japan is gradually shifting from a 'price trough' to a 'mature market with stable returns,' with strategies evolving from 'bottom-fishing' to 'asset allocation.'

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Among various research voices this week, the frequently mentioned risk points mainly fall into three categories:\n\n • Regional population trends: In areas with severe population outflow in local cities, the support for housing prices and rents is limited, requiring more careful site selection and property type choices.\n • Aging buildings and seismic standards: Some aging buildings face uncertainties in maintenance costs, seismic standards, and future redevelopment plans.\n • Policy expectations: As mentioned in the previous article, future regulations on homestays, short-term rentals, and land in sensitive areas may become stricter, affecting some investment models primarily based on short-term rentals.\n\nOverall, Japan remains a relatively preferred 'stable asset' for overseas investors, but it is no longer suitable to measure with expectations of 'sharp price increases'.

Four, Dubai: Under High-Level Stability, Asset Tokenization and Institutional Holding Become New Topics

Dubai's housing prices experienced rapid growth from 2021 to 2024, and in 2025, they entered a "high-level steady state" range overall: • Most research institutions expect the annual price increase in 2025 to be around 5%–10%, significantly lower than the double-digit growth of the previous two years; • The high-end villa and luxury property sectors remain in short supply, while the growth in mid-range apartments is beginning to converge; • The rental growth rate has gradually declined from a peak of over 20% to mid-to-high single digits. As prices become more rational, two noteworthy new trends have emerged in Dubai: 1) Rapid development of asset tokenization: Some platforms have started to split individual properties into a large number of "digital shares," allowing investors to hold partial equity with smaller amounts and trade them in secondary markets. This has partially opened up high-quality villa and apartment projects, which previously required large capital to participate in, to small and medium investors. 2) Expansion of institutional holdings: More regional and global institutions are beginning to centrally hold Dubai's office buildings, logistics parks, and long-term rental apartments through REITs, private equity funds, and other means, promoting products with "professional management + stable dividends" to ordinary investors. Individual buyers are no longer the sole protagonists in the market. These two trends, combined with regulatory upgrades in Dubai regarding escrow accounts, digital registration, and leasing systems, are gradually transforming it from a "retail-dominated speculative market" into a "mature asset market coexisting with both retail and institutional players."

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The emergence of asset tokenization will not immediately replace traditional whole-property purchases, but it will have impacts in several aspects:

• Lowering the threshold: Core assets that previously required hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to participate in can now be held in small amounts through diversification.
• Increasing liquidity: Some platforms offer secondary markets, allowing investors to adjust their holdings more flexibly instead of being tightly 'locked in' by a single property.
• Redefining 'overseas property allocation': For some investors, the future may involve a combination of 'holding core city assets through REITs or tokenization + purchasing physical properties in secondary core cities.'

For traditional whole-property purchases, the competition is no longer just from other buyers but also includes various 'financialized holding' products.

Five, Global Institutional Perspective: The Real Estate Investment Logic Shifting from "Return" to "Resilience"

A global real estate investment research report released this week indicates that the focus of real estate investment after 2025 is shifting from solely pursuing price returns to placing greater emphasis on 'resilience' and 'thematic' aspects: • Institutional funds increasingly prefer assets that are highly correlated with long-term structural trends, such as elderly care and medical facilities driven by population aging, data centers and logistics warehouses spurred by digitalization, and vacation properties and extended-stay hotels resulting from the upgrade in tourism and leisure. • In an environment where monetary conditions are no longer extremely loose, the model of simply relying on leverage to amplify returns is gradually becoming ineffective, with cash flow and asset quality once again becoming the core criteria for stock and project selection. • Inflation and geopolitical risks are prompting investors to diversify more finely across different countries and cities, rather than concentrating bets on a single market. In this context, Southeast Asia, Japan, and Dubai each play different roles—Southeast Asia offers growth potential and demographic dividends, Japan provides institutional stability and steady rental income, and Dubai offers a combination of global capital aggregation and 'high-standard rules + high liquidity'.

Based on this week's information, several trend summaries that may serve as references for overseas real estate investors (not constituting specific investment advice) can be provided: 1) From 'betting on a single city' to 'allocating across multiple cities': More and more funds are no longer putting all their chips on a single city, but instead combining growth cities in Southeast Asia, stable cities in Japan, and international hubs like Dubai. 2) From 'betting on unit price' to 'focusing on operations': The performance of operational assets such as hotels, apartments, and long-term rental communities increasingly depends on the operations team and brand, rather than just the location—operational capability has become a key variable in determining returns. 3) From 'retail investors going it alone' to 'coexistence of retail and institutional investors': The emergence of tokenization, REITs, and various fund products has provided ordinary investors with more paths for 'cooperative ownership' when allocating overseas real estate, while also requiring them to learn to read product descriptions and legal documents. For AIAIG readers, what's more important is not chasing short-term fluctuations each week, but thinking along these trends: which role suits them best—being an 'asset manager' who personally holds physical real estate, or an 'asset allocator' who participates in global real estate returns through product portfolios.

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AIAIG Overseas Real Estate Investment Weekly Report | 2025 Week 47 (Part 2): Global Housing Price Trends, Rental Yield, and Investment Strategy Analysis

1. Vietnam: Hotel and Tourism Real Estate Investment Shows Significant Recovery, Returns Return to Attractive Range

II. Thailand and Phuket: Tourism Recovery Supports, Property Prices Steadily Operating at High Levels

Three, Japan: Second-hand and Rental Markets Remain Stable, Yields Slightly Decline

Four, Dubai: Under High-Level Stability, Asset Tokenization and Institutional Holding Become New Topics

Five, Global Institutional Perspective: The Real Estate Investment Logic Shifting from "Return" to "Resilience"

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AIAIG Overseas Real Estate Investment Weekly Report｜2025 Week 47 (Part 1): Latest Real Estate Policies and Overseas Home Buying Information in Southeast Asia, Japan, and Dubai