When it comes to delivering infrastructure projects, establishing trust and goodwill with local communities and stakeholders is paramount. Cultivating strong relationships is even more important when large projects could potentially strain local resources or affect the environment or communities where people live and work. The social licence to operate is an unwritten contract of trust and ongoing approval between an operator and the local community or other stakeholders, which is being increasingly applied to large infrastructure projects. Although there is no legal binding to this intangible framework, its importance should not be underestimated. As the manager PATRIZIA puts it: “Ongoing community acceptance and support is hard to define, difficult to get, easy to lose and, if lost, near impossible to get back.”

Every now and then, someone will lob in a compliment of what a great job I’ve done in building the Institutional Real Estate, Inc platform. I’m always grateful for the recognition of the value of what we’ve built, but as others have noted, it takes a village. So, on the eve of the completion of our 38th year of continuously serving the interests of the institutional real estate and infrastructure investment community around the globe and the 10th year of serving the interests of the members of the private wealth advisory community in North America, it’s high time to recognise the contributions of the many people who helped me along the way.

In 2022, economic uncertainty, rising interest rates and the need to preserve capital led traditional lenders such as banks, life insurance companies and CMBS investors to reduce their exposure to real estate. Industrial properties were particularly negatively affected, due to their recent emergence as a property type favoured by the institutional equity investment community that had increasingly come to rely on debt to generate successively higher returns.

Global commercial real estate investment rose to $806 billion (€747 billion) in 2024, an 8 percent year-over-year increase. The Wealth Report, compiled by Knight Frank, says the figure increase marks a significant recovery following the sharp 43 percent contraction recorded in 2023 by the consultancy. The report also shows cross-border capital regaining momentum, rising by 12 percent to $171 billion (€158 billion).

The Reserved Investor Fund (RIF), a new UK-domiciled model for alternative investment vehicles, is expected to open the door to cheap onshoring of real estate funds in the United Kingdom. UK-based investment managers will now be able to avoid going offshore to register their funds, should they choose to do so. The RIF is exempt from certain taxes and enables managers to circumvent having to deal with multiple legal, tax and regulatory regimes when operating funds.

Europe’s housing and workspace requirements for the next 15 years could be met by redeveloping brownfield sites and repurposing vacant office space, creating a €4 trillion opportunity for investors. A new report from Gingko Advisor, a member of the Edmond de Rothschild Private Equity partnership, and Systemiq, estimates there is 19,000 square kilometres (7,300 square miles) of underused brownfield land in Europe as well as 300 square kilometres (116 square miles) of vacant office space.

The European retail sector is heading for a long-awaited revival, according to a new paper published by AEW. In The Long-Awaited Renaissance of European Retail, the manager says retail sales in the eurozone are projected to grow by 1.7 percent annually between 2025 and 2029, outpacing both GDP growth and real disposable income growth, which is says are expected to rise by 1.4 percent and 1.0 percent, respectively, over the same period. In-store retail sales in Europe are expected to stabilise with an annual growth rate of around 0.6 percent over the next five years. This forecast reflects the projected proportion of ecommerce within total retail sales to reach 20 percent by 2029, up from 16 percent in 2024, says AEW.

The correction in European logistics asset values that began in 2022 appears to have largely run its course, offering an attractive entry point for investors into the sector, says Clarion Partners. In a white paper on the market, the manager says logistics asset values have rebased and some markets are starting to show early signs of yield compression, while market fundamentals remain solid.

Fiera Real Estate has announced the final close of Fiera Real Estate Logistics Development Fund UK (FRELD). With capacity to invest up to £420 million (€507 million) and with leverage of up to 50 percent, FRELD is already 85 percent deployed after acquiring 10 prime assets in the United Kingdom’s leading logistics hubs such as Heathrow, Reading, Cambridge, Hayes and Edmonton. The fund is actively seeking additional opportunities for small-to-mid box logistics developments in major metropolitan areas anchored by strategic transport infrastructure, with access to one million people within 45-minute drivetime catchments.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed the world’s economic centre of gravity has been shifting eastward. In the 1980s, it was comfortably anchored in the North Atlantic. By 2050, it will sit somewhere between India and China. If you take this at face value, you would think Europe is moving towards irrelevance. So if you’re an investor, why on earth would you put your money there? Well, here’s why.