The District never falls out of favor with foreign investors as they are generally looking for buildings they can hold for the long term and that will preserve capital, CBRE Research Manager Wei Xie tells GlobeSt.com. “Within the US, DC is known to be recession-resistant. Investors are doing the math right now — every ten years there is a recession and the last recession was about ten years ago.”

There is a general consensus that the US economy's next downturn will be in the 2018-2019 time frame, but Xie says CBRE's own calculations pushes it a bit further out. “With the low interest rate environment our view is that it will happen in late 2019,” she says.

WASHINGTON, DC–At 73%, foreign investors accounted for the vast majority of office investment sales in the District for the first quarter, according to CBRE. That came to $1.2 billion, dramatically outpacing the $393 million dollar amount of cross-border investment sales in the first quarter of 2016. (By the end of the year, though, as most of us remember, foreign investment wound up accounting for 78% of District office sales with the bulk of the activity taking place during the second half of the year).

Another sign of foreign investors favor for the nation's Capitol: DC was the third most active city for foreign capital investment in real estate, following Manhattan and then Boston.

The top investor was Singapore's GIC, which recapitalized one building in the District owned by Beacon Capital Partners and invested with the company in a second, for a total of around $600 million. (As part of the transaction GIC also recapitalized the Pentagon Center in Crystal City). The DC properties were Lafayette Centre in the CBD and Terrell Place in the East End. The recaps were structured as joint ventures and for the Terrell Place financing, GIC separately invested alongside an existing Beacon-sponsored fund.

In second place came, to the surprise of none, Japanese investor Unizo, which closed on three assets in the first quarter for a total of $407 million. In January it closed on Capitol View for $148 million. Last week it announced the purchase of 1325 G St., NW and 1341 G St., NW, for a total of $259 million.

The District never falls out of favor with foreign investors as they are generally looking for buildings they can hold for the long term and that will preserve capital, CBRE Research Manager Wei Xie tells GlobeSt.com. “Within the US, DC is known to be recession-resistant. Investors are doing the math right now — every ten years there is a recession and the last recession was about ten years ago.”

There is a general consensus that the US economy's next downturn will be in the 2018-2019 time frame, but Xie says CBRE's own calculations pushes it a bit further out. “With the low interest rate environment our view is that it will happen in late 2019,” she says.