Investment management firm JLL's latest research indicates that offshore investment in Australian retail properties is set to increase during 2016 and beyond.
Acquistions made by investors outside Australia totalled 2.4 billion in 2015, doubling from the previous year and emerging as the largest net buyer category in the sector.
28% of transactions were made by offshore investors, followed by unlisted funds at 23% and private investors at 17%.
JLL head of retail investments Australasia believes that many of the trends shaping retail investment last year will be carried through the end of the year.
"Investors continue to exhibit a high capacity and willingness to engage in major retail acquisitions, while at the same time re-engineering their portfolios with tactical asset disposals.
"These conditions will be ideal for another year of elevated trading of assets in 2016.
"Active managers of retail assets with strong management capability and development expertise will continue to take advantage of the ideal market conditions to dispose of mature, stabilised, core assets in order to expand and upgrade existing assets within their portfolio, a theme which has continued over the past three years.
"Demand will again be led by offshore investors and wholesale funds seeking scale and low volatility.
"Focus is likely to shift in 2016 to assets that can deliver the highest potential for income growth in order to drive values and returns, given the compression in yields that has occurred in this cycle."
Transactions volumes from investors totalled 8.4 billion in Australia in 2015.