For more than thirty years, the AFIRE International Investor Survey has gathered the opinions of AFIRE members, comprised of approximately 180 institutional investors, pension funds, asset managers, and other leading global organizations from twenty-five countries that collectively oversee more than US$3 trillion assets under management (AUM).
This report provides a snapshot of what global real estate investors are thinking right now about cross-border investment—and how events today will impact future strategy.
Based on the diversity of ideas presented in this report, global capital in general—and commercial real estate in particular—has entered an era of significant change. A significant restructuring of global trade, conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, and heated political rhetoric are forcing caution and intense evaluation of cross-border investment strategies.
This survey was conducted in March of 2025 by the AFIRE team. The findings reported here reveal the continued vitality of cross-border collaboration and conversation—even in a market driven by technological acceleration, political reorganization, and climate extremes.
KEY FINDINGS
- 63% of investors have a negative outlook for US cross-border investments despite promising fundamentals in 2025 vs. 42% in the Fall of 2024.
- 44% of non-US investors plan some level of increase in US property investments, vs. the previous year’s 24%. Only 8% of investors plan a decrease in investments vs. 33% last year.
- 30% agree that pressured by climate related changes in quality of life as well as the rising costs of climate risk, population growth in the southern states over the next 10 years will decrease and the northern states will increase. That is up from 14% who agreed in 2024.
- 95% agree that energy issues including infrastructure health, reliability, and costs will be increasingly important factors for market selection over the next five years.
- The most preferred market for investments in 2025 is Dallas, followed by New York, Miami, Boston, and Atlanta.
PERMISSIONS
All information contained in this report is the intellectual property of AFIRE. No sale or sub-licensing of the data is permitted; nor shall any data be altered or overwritten in this report.
ABOUT THE COVER
Photo by Benjamin van Loon. November 2024.
DATA USE AND REPRINTS
Reprints and/or redesigns are permitted, with the following source attribution in all instances: “Source: As of April 2025; 2025AFIRE International Investor Survey 2025 Pulse; www.afire.org.”
Please contact Benjamin van Loon, bvanloon@afire.org, for hi-res graphics, data sets, reprints, and other uses.
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