Goodwin Gaw, a Hong Kong-born Chinese citizen educated in the U.S., has transformed Gaw Capital Partners into a global powerhouse with 15 offices, 500 employees, and over $35 billion in assets under management. His intercontinental perspective, combined with a deep reliance on data, contrarian thinking, and sharp instincts, has driven his success in developing real estate across Asia-Pacific and other high-barrier markets for over 25 years.
In a recent conversation with Juniper Square, Gaw reflected on his journey, offering unique insights into the Chinese real estate landscape, the future of office spaces in major U.S. cities, and how serving as a cultural “bridge” fuels his competitive edge
A bridge to China’s real estate boom
At the turn of the 20th century, China developed into the “world’s factory floor,” offering the rest of the world—and the U.S. in particular—access to low-cost manufacturing. This rapid industrialization catalyzed the rise of an enormous Chinese middle class. Between 2002 and 2018, China’s middle class grew from less than 1% to 25% of the country’s population—a demographic shift equivalent to the entire U.S. population.
Hundreds of millions of newly middle-class Chinese drove demand for new housing, consumer goods, and commercial real estate, particularly in urban areas. This presented lucrative opportunities for Western investors—provided they had insight into prime locations and understood the Chinese economic and cultural landscape.
“Knowing how the mindset of institutional investors in the U.S. works, I thought I could be a good translator,” Gaw said. “The U.S. investors saw me as a Chinese face, helping them navigate China. In China, although I was seen as a foreigner, I understood the Chinese political system and how to structure transactions to meet both Western and Chinese priorities. That kind of middle ground, being a bridge, was quite useful in those early days.”
This approach set Gaw Capital’s course as a way for Western capital to engage with China’s growing but functionally distinct real estate market. Gaw facilitated partnerships with state-owned enterprises that controlled valuable properties but lacked the resources or expertise to develop them.
Building on this success, Gaw Capital expanded into other Asian markets, including Vietnam, Japan, and Korea, applying the same bridge-building model to connect Western investors with high-growth opportunities. Critically, Gaw first entered every market with his own capital—a strategic move to gain firsthand insights before involving investor funds. This methodical risk management cemented Gaw Capital’s reputation as a trusted guide in navigating complex markets.
Assessing China’s current environment
China’s economy has changed substantially since the early 2000s. After real estate sales soared from less than RMB 1 Tr. in 2003 to more than RMB 15 Tr. in 2021, the Chinese government grew concerned about an overheating market. In August 2020, China announced its “three red lines” policy to reign in developer borrowing by capping debt-to-cash, debt-to-assets, and debt-to-equity ratios. Gaw believes the Chinese government was “probably not wrong in wanting to correct the real estate bubble” but said the correction was too heavy-handed, causing “even relatively healthy developers to get in big trouble with a lot of unfinished units.”
Earlier this year, Bloomberg estimated that China has the equivalent of 60 million unsold apartments, an inventory that could take four years to sell on the free market. In a country where real estate accounts for two-thirds of household assets, Chinese authorities have reacted to the looming crisis by rolling out real estate-targeted stimulus measures, even as foreclosures are rising.
Chinese consumers “are not confident about tomorrow, so they're not spending in China,” Gaw said. “Until that confidence comes back, it's going to be a pretty difficult place to deploy a large amount of capital. Even if you want to be a contrarian, you don't need to do it so early because, unlike the U.S., there's not a whole pile of dry powder sitting on the sideline waiting for that moment of pivot for them to jump back in. Many of the players have left the market.”
As a result, Gaw plans to leverage his position on the ground to watch and wait for the right moment to invest in the best opportunities.
Honing a contrarian investment strategy
As a contrarian investor himself, Gaw has always looked for opportunities in regions and asset classes that other developers overlooked. The first deal of his career set the trajectory. When he came across the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in California in the 1990s, it was a bankrupt, old hotel in an area beset by drug use and prostitution. Yet beneath the squalor, Gaw saw an iconic piece of Hollywood history ready for renovation.
The successful renovation of the Hollywood Roosevelt set a precedent for Gaw’s ability to identify abandoned or underutilized downtown properties with overlooked potential value.
Anticipating trends has become key to his success. For instance, Gaw purchased properties in downtown Los Angeles that were transformed into data centers in the earliest days of the Internet. He was also on the leading edge of the shift toward urban living in neglected areas, investing in empty office buildings that were “basically homes to pigeons and rats” but were, in his estimation, “assets that have a soul.”
Identifying the next pockets of opportunity
Today, Gaw’s contrarian investment perspective has him intrigued by undervalued office spaces in cities with resilient economic backbones like San Francisco. The signs are small but promising: Q3 CBRE data revealed a second consecutive quarter of positive demand in the U.S. office market overall, including improved net absorption in San Francisco and the San Francisco Peninsula. Additionally, the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent data shows positive migration into the city for the first time since 2017.
Gaw Capital also has its eyes on Japan. The large, well-regulated, and stable market offers opportunities to buy long-held assets with unoptimized cost structures, largely due to the interlocking business relationships between the owner and tenant that kept rents below market rates. Gaw has already been successful with “vintage” office buildings in Tokyo—Class C or Class D assets that a local developer would likely tear down. Instead, Gaw treated the assets like Hollywood Roosevelt and leaned into the buildings’ vintage character while updating the interiors.
“We actually renovated a building to make it even look older, but more authentic, more vintage,” he said. “That building attracted a lot of media, music, telecom, and tech tenants who pay premium rent.”
The non-secret to success
What began with a rundown Hollywood property that captured Gaw’s imagination decades ago has become an impactful and distinctive career with offices and staff worldwide. When people ask Gaw for his secret, though, his answer is strikingly simple.
“There's really no secret. Real estate is not that complicated,” he said. “We're not writing code, we're not programmers, we're not inventing something out of thin air. You’ve got to be a little lucky to get an opportunity, and then you’ve got to know that if opportunity knocks on the door, you’d better capture it.”