Is Europe a borrowers market for real estate?

Europe’s real estate financing market has turned “extremely liquid” for prime assets as banks compete aggressively to deploy capital, according to Duco Mook, head of treasury and debt financing, EMEA at CBRE Investment Management.

Speaking live at Expo Real 2025 with Real Asset Media, Mook said sentiment had improved markedly compared with last year’s event. “I’m seeing the market as very positive today, definitely if you compare that to the last year Expo Real,” he said. “If you look now, the real estate finance market is extremely liquid, especially for prime products. I think banks have difficulty to deploy their equity.”

He noted that lenders were “pitching for the same level of transactions” and that “we see quite a lot of price tension for best-in-class products.” Interest-rate stability is underpinning that shift. “Interest rates-wise in Europe we have a normalisation of the interest curve. The ECB is at the end of the rate cut cycle. There might be another rate cut but in principle they’re at the end so that means that the short-term interest rates will stay where they are and we actually have seen a small increase of the long-term interest rates.”

Mook described the current environment as favourable for quality borrowers. “For a prime product, income-producing standing assets in strong locations, it’s a borrower’s market. Banks are fighting for the deal and the offers that ultimately we present as a house to our investment committee to ask approval are really strong offers.”

However, he cautioned that liquidity was uneven across the market. “That’s not representative of the whole market. I think pricing in general is quite scattered. There could even be 100 bips difference between your final offer and the losing banks so it’s for banks also difficult to read the market but for best-in-class product it’s absolutely liquid.”

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