We just closed the proceedings of our 2018 annual editorial advisory board meeting for Institutional Real Estate Europe. Held at the Pulitzer Hotel in Amsterdam, 41 investor, investment manager and consultant representatives, who collectively control or advise more than €7.9 trillion in assets and nearly €1 trillion in real estate holdings, came together over two days to engage in networking events and closed private facilitated discussion sessions.

As always, the members of the board submitted this year’s discussion topics in advance, reflecting the greatest issues and concerns they’re currently facing in managing their portfolios. The “takeaways” from these roundtable discussions (there are no presentations, and a strict “no marketing” policy is observed throughout) were fascinating, as usual.

First, almost everyone in the room seemed to agree that the real estate markets just about everywhere on earth are pretty much late in the cycle.