Learning or Partnering? An Investigation of Foreign Real Estate Investment Strategies

This study examines international real estate investors’ strategy choices and highlights the implications for the commercial real estate (CRE) market. The empirical work adopts a network framework to quantify the market
connections and influences of the investors, to address foreign investors’ incentives to choose strategic partnerships and strengthen the bargaining power in the host market. We show network patterns and the findings indicate that as the UK market becomes a leading CRE market globally, the number of international investors and the fund asset volume significantly increases. More importantly, an increasing number of international investors (especially fund managers) become the core nodes in the network which will have impacts on the transaction process in the market.