Attendance at this year's EXPO REAL was almost back to pre-pandemic levels, according to the conference's organisers. The atmosphere among the 1,887 exhibitors and nearly 40,000 attendees who descended on Munich in early October, was, however, distinctly different from the one that pervaded Messe M-Unchen's vast halls in 2019.

As David Seymour and Will Bryant, part­ners in Ropes & Gray's London private equity real estate team, wrote in a review of the event, "amidst the current climate of geopoliti­cal and socioeconomic uncertainty, the mood was described as sombre and, in some quar­ters, pessimistic".

The gloomy current outlook is one that can be found across the real estate investment spectrum at present. "This is a time of change," says Oliver Fuchs, country development direc­tor at HB Reavis Germany.

"What is quite clear is that we had a long phase of stability; of constant yields, market conditions and perspectives. And this is now changing quite si