Real estate is not a problem for Europe, not yet. So long as buyers, hungry for income-producing investments, are prepared to pay the prices now being asked for property of all kinds in all manner of places and so long as those sellers do not expect easily to be able to replace the asset in the portfolio with something equally good, then real estate markets across Europe will keep moving along quite nicely. Some of those sellers may decide to bank the money and await events, and who can argue against that?

At present, international investors remain favourably disposed toward Europe and certainly have the cash, but the continent’s myriad of problems could affect real estate in the long run by bringing about a change in investor sentiment, either toward a single market or the whole continent.

It’s all relative, of course, but where do we start? Brexit is a big one. But now that we have the three large national elections of 2017 in the Netherlands, France and Germany