Growing investment pressure encourages virtual approach

Travel difficulties imposed because of the covid pandemic led to a greater focus on domestic investment in 2020 but the increasing pressure of money in the system means that this is starting to change.

“I’m witnessing way more willingness from investors to look at new strategies, new managers, new regions and being prepared to do full underwriting, full due diligence, virtually,” said Gabi Stein, managing director and senior real estate specialist at Nuveen.

Talking to Real Asset Insight’s Richard Betts she said this crisis has been different because in the past there was little focus on people and planet issues. “Despite the upheaval that we’ve seen in the last 18 months it’s really become impossible to ignore the climate emergency and the pandemic has shone a light on social and economic imbalance as well. Investors are really awake to all of this,” she said.

But while the market in Europe was making strides in these areas before the pandemic, their counterparts in the US have been further behind and European investors are using this as a sifting tool.

“American investors are a little further behind in their journey which in turn means that the underlying funds in the US have a bit of a way to go to catch up as they haven’t been focusing on it in in the way that we in Europe have been focusing on it.”

Click on the video above to watch the full interview or listen to the podcast below.