The deal is done.” So read the tweet from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Christmas Eve, announcing that a trade agreement between the UK and the European Union (EU) had been reached.

The events of the past 12 months have made this a unique period in the history of Germany’s retail sector.

As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on into 2021, I think it’s fair to say that we are all desperate for it to end. We urgently need to return to some sort of normality, for our own collective mental health, if nothing else.

The most successful real estate investors in 2021 will be those who carefully study the “growing chasm” that has appeared in property markets due to the COVID-19 crisis.

The COVID-19 crisis has not had a major impact on healthcare real estate assets, and the sector is predicted to have a strong 2021.

The industrial and logistics sectors had a record year in 2020, increasing their share of investors’ interest and capital. 2021 has set off on a similar footing, with two megafunds announcing equity raises for vehicles focused on the sectors.

Downturns all have different causes and effects, so the range of experiences for the real estate market is wide. They can range from mild declines affecting a narrow part of the market — such as the region-specific Asia crisis or the dotcom bubble, which affected mainly tech-related office tenants — all the way to a full-blown, synchronised global downswing, such as the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008.