The Chinese office market, for instance, has all but dried up, having set a new benchmark in May, when Asia Pacific Land completed the largest transaction to date on the mainland by acquiring a Shanghai building from Hong Kong-based Hutchison for Rmb4.4bn.

Property funds are sitting on at least $10bn of unspent, Asia-dedicated capital. To that must be added giant global funds recently raised by the likes of Morgan Stanley and Blackstone, whose Shanghai foray followed the closure in April of a $10.9bn real estate fund.

While smaller developers are now facing distressed asset sales, most of Asia’s property owners are sufficiently capitalised to hold on to their main assets.

'The Asian market is simply not that leveraged, particularly compared with the US and Europe, so there isn’t the same pressure to sell,' says Aaron Fischer,

Financial Times