What do trade fairs, exhibitions, conferences, conventions, business travel, package holidays and city breaks have in common? Apart from the inevitable tedium of getting to the particular business or tourist destination and notwithstanding the growing prevalence and irritation factor of AirBnB, somewhere for the people participating in those events to stay; a hotel and a bed for the night.
The energy efficiency of commercial buildings is becoming an ever more important topic, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. From April 2018, the landlords of the more than 80,000 rental units in the United Kingdom with Energy Performance Certificate ratings of F or G will need to review the opportunities to improve these assets when they are next let (or by the end of 2023).
There has been much discussion of the case for investing in alternative property; assets that are not the standard office, retail unit or industrial estate. So many column inches have been devoted toward the appeal of the leisure sector that investing in buildings like cinemas, restaurants, bowling alleys or stadia now feels almost mainstream!
Volatile currencies. Government elections and referendums. Unfamiliar regulatory and tax regimes. Brexit. All good reasons for concern when it comes to institutional investors allocating capital to investments in European real estate.
Following Spain’s plunge into recession in 2008, the country’s residential and commercial property markets experienced a crash that has lasted nearly a decade.
Serviced offices and co-working environments are not new concepts but have taken on a new lease of life in this age of technology and innovative ways of working and using office space.
When Paris is in the news these days, the focus is overwhelmingly on the effects of Brexit on the French capital. After all, Paris is only 350 kilometres away from London and the current uncertainty around the impact of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union on London’s financial sector could be huge.
As the daily drumbeat of all political news all of the time continues on, there are many business stories that will most likely have larger, long-term implications. And two of these come to mind.
Several funds entered the market during June and July.
The United Kingdom may have regained its place as Europe’s largest commercial real estate investment market in Q2 2017 due to the continuation of large single-asset trophy office purchases in central London by Asian investors, but at some point that source of trading will necessarily fall away.