Canada’s universe of professionally managed real estate fell in value and nudged down as a proportion of global market share during 2024, but it retains its ranking as the ninth largest market that the index producer, MSCI, monitors. MSCI’s recently released annual overview of the global real estate investment market confirms Canada had plenty of company in a year when the value of surveyed holdings contracted by 4.1 per cent — dropping to USD $12.5 trillion from USD $13 trillion in 2023.
The value of Canada’s market is pegged at USD $375 billion (just shy of CAD $540 billion based on the exchange rate as of Dec. 31, 2024) or about USD $44 billion (CAD $63.3 billion) less than the previous year. That equates to 3 per cent of global market weight, down from 3.2 per cent in 2023, but back on par with 2022. It is again sandwiched between eighth-ranked Hong Kong and tenth-ranked Switzerland, and both those markets saw value drop by USD $23 billion and USD $19 billion respectively.
The United States and 27 other of the 38 monitored markets took the same trajectory. The U.S. continues to dominate in the global mix, registering a gain of 113 basis points (bps) in overall market weight. However, investment real estate value estimated at nearly USD $4.9 trillion was down USD $60 billion from 2023. The United Kingdom, ranked the third largest market at USD $891 billion, was among the minority with year-over-year value remaining steady, but it posted a 29 bps gain in market weight due to relative decline of other national markets.
“This marked the third consecutive year of contraction, following more than a decade of consistent growth,” observes Luke Flemmer, head of private assets at MSCI. “The shift in property type preferences continued. Most notably, the gap between office and residential markets narrowed in 2024, with the share of residential properties in the global universe rising and office’s share falling. To boot, industrial overtook office — a traditional bedrock of investor portfolios — as the second-most invested property type in the Americas.”
Although the share of office properties dropped 1.6 per cent year-over-year within the global universe of professional managed real estate, it continues to be the largest component, at 27.2 per cent. Residential accounts for 22.7 per cent, followed by industrial (18.9 per cent), retail (18.3 per cent), hotels (5.4 per cent) and health care (2.8 per cent). Office is predominant in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific, whereas residential accounts for 29 per cent of market size in the U.S., attributed to its “large professionally managed apartment market”.
Looking at the investors, unlisted companies control more than 61 per cent, or USD $7.7 trillion of market size, with listed entities covering the remainder, valued at about USD $4.8 trillion. Commingled funds represent nearly 48 per cent of the unlisted market, equating to about USD $3.5 trillion in value.
Across the global market, currency value fell an average of 3.7 per cent against the U.S. dollar in 2024, but Canada was among the most affected countries, as the Canadian dollar fell by more than 8 per cent from its 2023 level. Sweden and Australia saw their currency lose 8 to 9 per cent against the U.S. dollar, while Japan, Norway, New Zealand and South Korea all experienced drops of more than 10 per cent.
This factors into the shrinking global market size in 2024, but 2025 may bode better for Canada given the Canadian dollar’s 4.5 per cent gain to date — up from USD $0.6948 at Dec. 31, 2024 to USD $0.726 as of Aug. 2025.
A combination of falling currency and an 18 per cent year-over-year increase in transaction volume bumped up the global turnover ratio to 6.2 per cent, from 4 per cent in 2023. Canada’s turnover ratio hovered just below the global average, at 6.1 per cent.
