A large minority of European real estate investors expect the market to decline over 2019.

Union Investment’s latest investment climate study has found that 41 percent of investors in Germany, France and the United Kingdom believe that the real estate investment climate will deteriorate this year. Only 22 percent expect to witness a noticeable improvement.

The survey has also found significant differences in expectations for 2019 within individual national markets. Most of the optimists can be found in France, with 40 percent of French respondents predicting a noticeable improvement in the investment climate and only 24 percent preparing for a slowdown. In Germany and the United Kingdom, however, around half of property investors rate the outlook as negative.

As a consequence of the significant negativity unearthed by Union Investment, 86 percent of UK investors, and around half of all French and German respondents said that they are pursuing a strategy that a