In terms of property types, development sites won out by a wide margin in Q3, recording a 58% share of Chinese outbound investment by asset category and raising the sector's cumulative total to US$8.4 billion thus far in '17, a 234% Y-O-Y increase. Biggest of the development-site deals—and at US$612 million, the largest outbound investment in commercial property by a Chinese company during Q3—was the August sale of Nine Elms Square in London to CC Land Holdings and R&F Properties. In a sign of the times, the formerly high-flying Dalian Wanda Group scrapped its bid to acquire the mixed-use project.

By destination, Australia took top honors, followed by the UK and Hong Kong. Canada jumped into fourth placed, while the US declined to fifth place with just US$192 million of Chinese investment there.

“Ahead, the outlook for Mainland Chinese participation in overseas real estate markets is quite uncertain over the short term and will be heavily reliant on Central government approvals of any proposed deals,” says Francis Li, Cushman & Wakefield's head of investment & advisory services, Greater China..”Given the immense scale of Chinese property developers—five of whom are now listed on the Global Fortune 500 list—it would seem that there is now, more than ever before, a compelling business case for a prudent re-balancing of their development portfolio with an allocation of funds to projects across global markets.”