Deleveraging banks with legacy European commercial real estate (CRE) loan books are expected to sell off as much as €15 billion this year through sales of loan portfolios, as banks continue to exit legacy exposures undertaken in the years prior to the global financial crisis.

Something may be said to be “as safe as houses”, but the future of the real estate industry may be at risk if the industry doesn’t do a better job of marketing its services. So said Paul Trickett, Goldman Sachs’s global portfolio solutions supremo when he addressed the IPD European Property Investment Conference in Frankfurt last year.

While the Asian financial crisis of 1998 may be a distant memory, the current economic malaise in Europe is a startling reminder of what could happen if the European Union does not manage the situation and allows the crisis to wallow. Inaction by country governments and the bloc has more often created greater tension than any concrete solutions — remember the painful outcomes for Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand and the subsequent changes in regimes. To complicate matters, sluggish growth in the United States and a manufactured slowdown in China have started to bite growth prospects for the Asia Pacific region and have consequently resulted in a slowdown in real estate transactions.