Sharia and Real Estate: Investing on Principles

NEW YORK CITY—CBRE recently reported that Middle Eastern investors are expected to spend an estimated $15 billion per year on commercial real estate globally in the near term, with an increasing share of that outflow coming to the US. It’s reasonable to assume that a good number of investors from the region, although not necessarily all, will be Muslim, and that a good number of Muslim investors will abide by the principles of Sharia.

In years past, adherence to Sharia and investing in real estate might have been incompatible, but over the past 15 years it has become more common. The ability to structure investments in accordance with the Sharia “has opened up the global market to a new group of investors,” John Opar, a partner at Shearman & Sterling LLP and a specialist in Sharia-compliant transactions, tells GlobeSt.com.