Foreign investment into Beijing's property market will warm up in 2009, following the easing of regulatory restrictions and shrinking expectation gap between sellers and buyers, said a Jones Lang LaSalle report yesterday.

"Capital raised in 2007 and 2008 hasn't yet been spent, and investors wait in the sidelines for capital values to come down," said Julien Zhang, managing director and head of markets at Jones Lang LaSalle's Beijing office.

The expectation gap between buyers and sellers, which remained wide in 2008, is likely to narrow and lead to a more active investment market in 2009.

"In view of declining rentals and higher yields required by investors to compensate for the riskier investment environment, we project average prices to fall in the range of 15 percent to 20 percent across all property sectors this year," Zhang added.

The government now looks to broaden the investment landscape of property markets with the introduction of real estate investment trusts (REITs) and easing the restrictions on insurance companies investing directly in the domestic real estate markets.

REITs not only provide developers and landlord/operators an additional avenue to financing but also allow a greater number of individuals and companies to invest in the real estate markets, said Zhang.

According to the Jones Lang LaSalle report, acquisitions total $4.1 billion in Beijing's property market last year, down 18.3 percent year-on-year. And foreign acquisitions dropped by 74 percent on a yearly basis to $900 million by the end of last year.

(Chinadaily.com.cn January 14, 2009)