Continuing low returns in the European real estate market, coupled with significant volatility in the region, are giving investment managers a quandary — accept low yields and focus on income or aim for the prizes offered further up the risk curve.
Two annual surveys of global real estate secondary market activity — from Landmark Partners covering global markets and from CBRE covering that firm’s secondary trades — have highlighted the increasing interest of investors in secondaries, or the buying and selling of units in real estate funds.
In another indication that the current real estate market cycle may be near or at its peak, global annual fundraising volume for private equity real estate funds decreased in 2016 after six consecutive years of expansion.
The UK government is on track to trigger Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon by its stated deadline of end-March. Negotiations with the European Union on the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the EU will start shortly thereafter and bring Brexit into sharper focus, depending on how talks go.
2016 saw two major political shocks in the form of the United Kingdom’s vote on its membership of the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as the 45th US president.
Last year’s real estate investment volume numbers for Europe show that 2016 wasn’t as good for market participants of all kinds as 2015 — a preliminary total of €254.6 billion for 2016 against the record €323 billion recorded for 2015.
2017 has arrived and a major trend that will surface more in the year ahead is that economic returns alone are no longer satisfactory for many long-term institutional investors throughout Europe.
Retail real estate has had a good run during the past few years and, when all the numbers are in, 2016 is expected to be another good year, though not as good as 2015.
As of February, The Blackstone Group had raised approximately €6.7 billion for Blackstone Real Estate Partners Europe V.