India REIT market overtakes Hong Kong in Asia

Cushman & Wakefield said new listings such as Knowledge Realty Trust and Bagmane Prime Office REIT added a combined 53.7 million square feet, accounting for around three-quarters of the new space added to the six Indian REITs between June 2025 and June 2026. That pushed the country’s listed REIT universe to about 178 million square feet by June 2026, with another 36.7 million square feet under construction or planned. The expansion helps explain why India has overtaken Hong Kong in regional ranking and why investors are increasingly treating the market as an institutional asset class rather than an emerging experiment.

For property owners, the implications are immediate. Larger listed portfolios improve liquidity, broaden financing options and make it easier to monetise stabilised assets. For the broader economy, REIT growth supports capital recycling: landlords can sell completed assets into trusts, redeploy capital into new projects and, in turn, sustain construction and transaction activity. That is especially relevant in a market where office vacancy in premium stock is tightening and demand from multinational companies remains resilient.

The contrast with other Asian REIT markets underscores the story’s significance. Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong still grew in market value through March 2026, but their expansion was measured: Japan benefited from improving offices and hotels, Singapore from acquisitions, and Hong Kong from a valuation recovery and policy support. India, by comparison, is being propelled by scale creation. In other words, it is not merely recovering; it is building a larger base.

That said, the bull case is not one-way. India’s market is still heavily exposed to offices, so a slowdown in global tech, weaker leasing demand or a turn in GCC expansion would matter. The bear case is that scale alone does not guarantee returns if asset quality, governance and capital discipline falter. But the immediate takeaway for investors is that India’s REIT market now has enough depth to attract more serious institutional attention, particularly from buyers looking for income, inflation-linked growth and exposure to one of Asia’s fastest-growing commercial property pools.

The next phase will be defined by whether the market can keep adding high-quality inventory without compromising yields. If it does, India’s rise in the regional REIT league table may prove less a headline than the beginning of a longer re-rating of its listed property sector.