Hines calls a buying window in half of global markets

About half of the roughly 800 global real estate markets Hines Research tracks have moved into what the firm considers a potential buying window, and the current cycle appears to have bottomed in 2025. In a new report, 'The New Age of Investment Access,' covered by IREI, Hines argues that private real estate has repriced enough since late 2021 to look better positioned than private equity, infrastructure, and private credit—whose valuations remain comparatively elevated—and cites improving values in parts of Europe and Asia as early evidence the turn is underway.

The historical frame is generous and worth taking slowly: Hines identifies three major real estate cycles since the late 1970s, each lasting roughly 13 to 16 years and generating average annual total returns of nearly 12% during the recovery period, which implies the recovery is where the returns concentrate and the buying window sits at its front edge. If 2025 is the bottom, the window rewards patience more than timing, and the 13-to-16-year cadence says the patient money has been paid before.

The report's strongest conviction, though, is housing. Hines estimates a net shortage of about 6.5 million housing units across the key developed economies it tracks, with construction still well below recent peaks, and argues that the shortage can support rents and income in markets where demand is durable. For allocators who have spent three years watching cap rates reset, that is a scarcity thesis, not a yield thesis—a 6.5 million-unit gap does not disappear simply because interest rates stay put.

The report also examines the expanding role of individual investors in private markets, noting that they hold roughly half of global wealth, and the emphasis suggests Hines sees the individual channel as a growing source of demand for private real estate—one where the next round of buyers for this recovery is already being recruited, a longer-term point than the buying window itself.

The cyclical case lives or dies with the 2025 bottom; the housing case pays regardless. A 6.5 million-unit deficit supports income wherever valuations go next, which makes Hines's housing conviction the call to watch.