Investor sentiment in Europe is still strong

Investments keep coming into the UK and European property markets despite concerns about the late cycle and political uncertainty, said Jonathan Hull, managing director, EMEA Capital Markets, CBRE.

‘The late cycle is mentioned all the time, in every meeting you go to, but people still keep investing,’ he told Real Asset Day. ‘This is because people are struggling to see where else they could invest and generate the same kind of returns that they can get in real estate across the major sectors’. 

The office and logistics markets in particular are doing really well, he said, and they have been ‘very consistent’, giving investors some certainty, while retail ‘continues to cause some concern’.

Investor sentiment continues to be strong, he said: ‘We see strong inflows from Asia and from the US into EU markets’.

The UK is a slightly different story. ‘The UK is further ahead of the cycle compared to many other European countries,’ he said. ‘The UK has seen strong transactional volumes in 2018 but it is true that people recently have looked at the market and have been a little more cautious.’

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