Simply describing where you focus as an investment manager without clearly distinguishing what’s unique about where you focus doesn’t help investors understand how you’re different. The same is true for your philosophy statements. It’s not what you believe that matters; it’s what you believe that your competitors apparently don’t, based on how they’ve assembled their portfolios.

Investors are rebalancing their exposure to different types of real estate sector or risk classes. This offers potential new investors the opportunity to enter existing and established German real estate investments and to better assess risks and opportunities. This increases the demand for a liquid secondary market that offers a discreet exit on the one hand and a transparent opportunity to enter on the other. German secondaries real estate investments will therefore now pick up speed.

There has been a 30 percent increase in the amount of annual capital expenditure required to meet decarbonisation targets across Europe. AEW estimates investment in retrofits — based on the EU’s Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor (CRREM) standards — to equate to 19 basis points per square metre of prime capital value. This works out at an average of €14 per square metre across all real estate sectors.

UK shopping centre owners looking to sell have taken a hit of –57 percent this year, according to calculations made by CoStar Group. The real estate data firm says sales of UK malls have picked up recently, as buyers find that assets are changing hands at significant discounts when compared with their previous sale prices.

Arboretum Nanterre La Défense, a wooden office complex in Paris that is the largest of its kind in Europe, was inaugurated by French President Emmanuel Macron on 19 September. The €560 million asset, developed by WO2 and BNP Paribas Real Estate, is located on the outskirts of the central business district La Défense. It has been built on the former site of a paper mill in the Nanterre area of the French capital, on the edge of a picturesque park on the banks of the Seine river.

Jen Molloy, editor of Institutional Real Estate Asia Pacific, talks to Philipp von La Rosée, managing director of family office and multi-family office AM Alpha, and his colleague Caroline Dellasega, vice president of investor relations, about the firm’s real estate investment programme.

Since the opening of Germany’s first shopping centre — in Sulzbach, near Frankfurt am Main, in 1964 — retail has played a central role in shaping the country’s urban landscape. The COVID-19 crisis and the consequent structural transformation of retail, however, have hit shopping centres especially hard. And the growth in online retail has been putting brick-and-mortar retail under particular pressure for many years. Despite these challenges, the retail property market is showing the first signs of recovery, and the future is looking more promising.