In a market slowdown, it always helps that some-one is working to keep the show on the road. The European real estate industry was already concerned that it was going to be difficult to main-tain the momentum of the record 2015 transaction activity; then Brexit happened, investor anxieties about market conditions and high pricing were confirmed, and H1 2016 investment volumes were found to be well off the levels of one year ago.

Real Capital Analytics reports that European commercial real estate investment volume for H1 2016, at €107 billion, was 35 percent lower than for the same period last year, due largely to a 45 percent decline in transaction activity in the United Kingdom but also to an increase in inves-tor risk aversion. The United Kingdom may have accounted for more than half of the total fall in investment levels, but there was a fall too in Ger-many, Europe’s second-largest market, which saw a 36 percent drop.

“A number of global economic, financial a