Foreign investment in China shrunk from 56.9% in 2007 to 26.3% in 2008, according to DTZ, particularly investors from the United States.

Real estate investments in China dropped by -46% year-on-year with 508 major transactions worth US$34.87bn recorded in 2008. Some 85% or 432 of these were land transactions for property development while 15% or 76 of them accounted for strata-title (a form of ownership devised for multi-level apartment blocks).

In addition, the number of deals in the office sector also increased from 19 in 2007 to 22 in 2008 with total transaction value nearly doubled from US$2.074bn to US$3.959bn. Meanwhile, other sectors like retail and industrial saw a drop in the number of transactions.

Beijing was the best performer throughout 2008 in the strata-title and en-bloc buildings transactions, with an investment of US$3.3bn in 15 deals. This was followed by Tianjin and Wuhan which witnessed positive growths of 87.5% and 31.1% year-on-year respectively in terms of number of deals and total considerations.