For Japan, all you said is a big issue and the tax is very high，no matter buy, get rent, annual, sell all these tax. The current japan reits dividen return should be only 2.x percent annually, not that attactive. If you are interested in reit in china, you may look into hong kong reits, but only 823 is good but so expensive now, all other reits are just financial tools of their rich boss, I did compare to hong kong house index and other than 823 all just bullxxxx.
Thanks again for sharing your homework, I'm more interested at the moment with mainland and European REITS but nice to have the choice narrowed down in HK, volume on 823 is half decent as well. Do you know why 823 is down around 17% since January 2015 while the real estate market seems still strong in HK. Does the market dislike their mainland acquisitions ? http://hkureis.versitech.hku.hk/
Wondering wether taxation is a reason there is no REIT in China, considering how common there it is to declare only a portion of the price of real estate transactions, than part of a rental (if at all ) to reduce the tax burden, a REIT with strict auditing requirements might be a less attractive investment than buying real estate directly.
I think mainly because China government already controls the housing price a lot and don't want the housing price goes up so fast while average salary cannot catch up at all. Reits is like pushing oil in already buring fire.
Nothing in China is really audited ha ha, most of the stocks PE in china basically are fake. China GDP or any data should be fake. The biggest China banks PE should be fake too.
If you compare the worst price of 823 in financial crisis and HK housing index CCL http://www1.centadata.com/cci/cci_e.htm 823 has raised so much more than that, at least 100% more or even 200% more. 823 is mainly about commercial malls but still the raise % should not be that different from residential housing price raise %. 823 recently became a part of HSI index so it gave it a boost, then HK and China stock market dropped a lot after a good raise so 823 price could be affected too. Raise and drop could have no relationship with fundamental reason, HK market is controlled or affected by few institutional financial players anyway. Market may not like their mainland acquisitions, hard to say. Buy European asset also means bidding their currency goes up, that is a double gamble, asset and currency...