Across the world, property developers and investors in the 2020s are living history large: pandemic, then war in Eastern Europe attended by nuclear saber-rattling and continental energy crunches. Add epic international supply-chain snags, then worldwide inflation and rising interest rates.
And 2023 may deliver a new malady to the mix: a global economic recession.
The same COVID-19 scourge — and government strictures — that savaged office, hospitality and retail property markets around the sphere also led to monetary easing and fiscal spending in the early 2020s. While central bank and government largesse may have allowed nations to skirt untenable business and social disruptions, the policies planted the seeds for accelerating inflation in 2022.
Indeed, by late 2022 Great Britain reported “double-digit inflation,” an expression not heard in decades in the developed world, while most of Europe and North America were nearly in the same boat.
As 2022