EMEA ViewPoint July 2010
The Role of Corporate Real Estate in Mergers and Acquisitions
The number of mergers and acquisitions being announced is increasing, as stronger companies look to take advantage of the current economic climate by acquiring weaker rivals. No two such transactions are the same, but real estate is almost always an important part of the merger process.
The second quarter saw €23.5 billion transacted in the European investment market, a 15% increase on the €20.3 billion reported in Q1 2010. This is despite the stress factors emerging in the broader capital markets, such as the sovereign debt crisis and the introduction of austerity measures by many European governments.
The May data from BVI reveals the extent of the impact of government proposals for reform of the GOEF sector. Although the very strong inflows from the start of the year had already been moderating, May saw this turn into substantial withdrawals totalling €1.44 billion.
This report ist designed to provide our clients with an immediate view on prime rents and yields across major markets and sectors in the region as at the end of the quarter.
EMEA View Point July 2010
What role for property sales in government deficit-reduction programmes?
With many European governments having announced aggressive deficit-reduction plans, the motive to dispose of government-owned real estate assets remains strong. Several countries had existing commitments to disposal programmes and, although asset sales by governments totalled under €1bn last year, the need to bring deficits under control will have reinforced their intentions.
EMEA View Point July 2010
A new Office Development Cycle? Not yet
Some recent indicators have suggested a measure of improvement in the European office markets: rents have stabilised, vacancy rates are peaking at lower levels than in some previous cycles and leasing volumes have risen from their mid-2009 lows. This raises the question as to whether these are the early precursors of the next development cycle.
Following a challenging 2009 in the European data centre market, the first quarter of 2010 has shown encouraging signs. Whilst we do not expect the market to return to its stellar levels of 2007/8 in the short term, it is reassuring to see that there is a steady flow of transactions – particularly in the Retail Colocation sector.
EMEA View Point June 2010
Yield and pricing patterns in the european logistics market
While downward yield movements and investment turnover growth have been relatively modest in the European logistics market over the past year, longer-term changes in the sector’s investment characteristics have established a different, and lower, yield regime over the past ten years than was observed previously.
The April net inflows data released in the second week of June was in-line with general expectations: much weaker than the net inflows reported earlier in the year, although still surprisingly a net positive €79 million. Overall, the GOEF sector is under increasing pressure as investor withdrawals continue.
The global economic recovery as measured by GDP started in mid-2009, and continued in 4Q 2009 when GDP grew at 4% on an annual basis. In 1Q 2010, global growth has moderated to a pace of 3%.
This is a new report based on quarterly fund valuations carried out by CB Richard Ellis and designed to enhance transparency by providing a general indication of patterns of value change in the European property market.
Economic recovery across Europe remains patchy, and more severe austerity measures will need to be implemented in some countries. For now, office demand is mostly being driven by corporate rationalisation and consolidation.
Stable headline rents secured by significant incentive packages still on offer in many markets. Incentives expected to fall as market strengthens this year.
Although development starts remain low, reactivation of schemes will be a key issue to monitor over the remainder of the year.
March net inflows into the German Open-ended Funds reached almost €535 million. This was a positive result, bringing the Q1 2010 net inflows to a total of €3.2 billion. More or less the same funds featured with the highest net inflows this year so far. Most notably, RREEF’s Grundbesitz-global, having seen the highest net inflows in each of the three months, attracted over €761 million of new investment.
Our central expectation is for the European investment market to reach €110 billion in 2010. This is a significant increase on €73 billion reported in 2009.
Corporate sale-and-leasebacks, particularly by financial institutions, continued into 2010. These featured strongly amongst Q1’s largest transactions.
The downward trend in yields continued. The CB Richard Ellis All Property Average Prime Yield fell to 6.03% - a level comparable to that in early 2005.
After the rapid growth in turnover in the commercial real estate investment market in Q4 2009, with investors pushing to get transactions completed by the year end, it was expected that turnover would fall back somewhat in the first quarter of 2010.
European commercial real estate investment reached €19.1 billion in Q1 2010, 65% above the Q1 2009 level, confirming the general recovery in investment activity that began in the latter part of 2009. As expected, the Q1 figures show a marked decline on Q4 2009. The last few months of the year are traditionally the most active, with investors pushing transactions through to complete them by the year-end.
February net inflows into the German Openended Funds amounted to €977 million, extending January’s positive news. A total of €2.7 billion net inflows have been reported into the sector in the first two months of 2010.
This report is designed to provide our clients with an immediate view on prime rents and yields across major markets and sectors in the region as at the end of the quarter.
In the CMBS industry at the moment the focus seems to centre on the role of the Special Servicer. These are the people who come in like fire fighters to deal with a problem once it has burst into flames. The poor relation of the industry is the Primary Servicer and yet his role is crucial to the future success of the CMBS market. In fact, if the Primary Servicer is effective he may even be able to prevent the Special Servicer Transfer Event which would activate the Special Servicer’s appointment. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and for investors it is clearly more prudent to head off a disaster beforehand than to deal with it after it occurs.
This is a new report based onquarterly fund valuations carried out by CB Richard Ellis and designed to enhance transparency by providing a general indication of patterns of value change in the European property market. There are various existing measures of European property market performance, including CB Richard Ellis' own prime rent, yield and capital value indices, each withits own sample base and methodology.
EMEA ViewPoint March 2010
European Investor Intentions for 2010
In early March 2010, over 270 people from across the European property investment community responded to our online survey asking them to answer six simple questions regarding the prospects for real estate investment. In each case, investors were given a series of options and were asked to select just one response. Whilst obviously not capturing the full depth and complexity of investor views, the results highlight some interesting similarities – and differences – of opinion about the prospects for the market and potential threats to the emerging recovery.
EMEA ViewPoint Q1 2010
The Sovereign Debt Crisis and Real Estate
The turmoil in the government bond markets in recent weeks has captured a great deal of attention. However, beyond the political and economic fallout of the Greek debt crisis, real estate investors will want to know what the implications are for their sector.
The Continental European commercial real estate (CRE) debt market as a whole is facing very similar problems to those already identified in the UK. The internationalisation of investment and lending in 2005-2007 led to convergence across the European debt markets, as well as real estate investment. Across Europe there is, therefore, a large legacy of problem debt, with a significant build-up of maturities over the next three years.
In January the German Open-ended Funds reported €1.7 billion net inflows. Whilst a generally encouraging result, it is typical for the sector to have high net inflows in January due to annual financial planning and dividend reinvestment.
The global recession hit hard and fast in 2009, with few countries escaping the impact of the financial crisis. Even Asia Pacific, which continued to post positive economic growth in 2009, experienced a significant slowdown. The outlook for 2010 is far more optimistic (though from a low base) and, led by Asia and particularly China the global economy is expected to grow 3% this year. However, the pattern of recovery is varied; the mature economies are expected to expand by around 2%, with the weakest growth in Europe.
EMEA ViewPoint February 2010
Changing occupation strategies in the legal sector
Major legal practices are changing the way in which they occupy office space. Historically viewed as having a very “traditional” approach to office layouts, with a high proportion of cellular offices, many practices are introducing more modern, open plan environments.
The total value of investment transactions fell 40% year-on-year to €73 billion, although a strong final quarter suggests 2010 will be much better.
Most aspects of the market saw a much stronger H2. Prime yields fell sharply, although for more secondary property prices are generally stable at best.
The level of cross-border activity has yet to increase markedly. Although it is clear that there are plenty of foreign investors with an interest in the European market, so far this has yet to translate into a higher proportion of transactions.
At €631 million, December net inflows into the German Open-ended Funds were strong, bringing the year’s total to €3.21 billion. Whilst the year-end results were encouraging, their release coincided with some negative developments in the market.
The third quarter of 2009 in the European Carrier Neutral Hotel (CNH) market has shown an encouraging improvement compared with the first half of the year. Take-up across the five Tier 1 data centre markets this quarter was 18,190 m², an increase of 730 m² on the first two quarters of the year combined.
EMEA View Point January 2010
Emerging Challenges for Industrial and Logistics Occupiers
Faced with recessionary conditions in most geographies, occupiers of industrial and logistics buildings have had to take steps to reduce their cost base. This doesn’t automatically skew demand towards cheaper space, mainly because the quality radient is unacceptably steep.
European commercial real estate investment grew to €25.7 billion in Q4 2009, a 42% increase on Q3 2009. This is the highest quarterly total since the Lehman’s collapse – and a confirmation that the upturn in investor interest, that started across major markets in mid 2009, has now spread further afield.
There were widespread falls in prime yields across Europe in the final quarter of last year. The UK continues to stand out as the focus of the largest movements in yield, but many of the major European centres are now seeing yields moving down, particularly in the office sector.
EMEA View Point January 2010
After the Storm: Where next for European Property?
Having come through a period of steep decline in early 2009, most European economies have begun to record positive quarter-on-quarter growth again as a result of near-zero interest rates and, in some cases, large-scale government intervention. Most commentators are anticipating slow, but positive, economic growth in 2010.
November net inflows into the German Open-ended Funds were reported at just under €65 million. Although this is quite low, it is a substantial improvement on the €660 million net redemptions reported in October.
EMEA View Point December 2009
The Changing European Development Cycle
One of the ways in which the credit crunch and recession have affected the real estate sector has been to cause a sharp reduction in the scale of development activity in most of the main European office markets. Severe restrictions in the availability of development finance, coupled with weak tenant demand and falling values, have resulted in a 4.5% drop since the end of last year in expected office completions over the two years 2009-10.
Many economic indicators are showing positive signs. GDP turned the corner in 3Q 2009 for many countries including both Japan and the U.S., which grew by 4.8% and 3.5% respectively; quarter-over-quarter, annualized. Financial markets have stabilized and credit conditions have begun to ease, resulting in the narrowing of corporate bond spreads.
After a couple of months of positive inflows, October net inflows into the German Open-ended Funds turned negative again. Total net redemptions amounted to €660, making it the weakest month this year so far. To a great extent this is due to activity at iii-managed funds.
European retail investment grew to over €5 billion in Q3 2009, a quarterly increase of 18%. In contrast to the 34% jump in activity across the market as a whole, the upturn in retail activity has been less pronounced; although equally it had been shallower on the downside.
September net inflows into the German open-ended funds reached €81 million. This muted result comes on the anniversary of the Lehmans collapse, which triggered major outflows, with many funds forced to close to redemptions during October 2008.
Improved market sentiment resulted in an upturn in the European commercial real estate investment market in Q3. Activity totaled €17.3 billion, an increase of 34% on Q2 2008.
Following the reopening of a number of funds during the summer months, the August BVI data reported sector net inflows at a positive €326 million. This is a very encouraging result after the net withdrawals of over €400 million in July, due to one-off redemptions from the newly reopened CS EUROREAL and KanAm grundinvest Fonds.
This report is designed to provide our clients with an immediate view on prime rents and yields across major markets and sectors in the region as at the end of the quarter.
Following on from a weak first quarter of 2009 in the European Data Centre market, we have witnessed a further decline in take-up in Quarter 2. This demonstrates that the start of the year was not merely an anomaly and that the wider economic downturn has finally had an impact on data centre take-up.
In contrast to the previous few months, the German Open-ended Funds reported strong net outflows in July. Total net redemptions amounted to almost €440 million, making it the weakest month since November last year.
European economies still contracting:
Most European countries are expected to see a contraction of between 2% and 5% over 2009 as a whole as they fall further into recession. The European Union is expected to see a contraction of around 4% in 2009 compared to the 2.6% expected by the US.
Investment activity was low in H1 2009, at just €25 billion, but showed some signs of recovery towards the end of that period, with higher levels of investor interest and activity.
The UK and Spain appear to be at the forefront of the recovery in market activity, with investors spotting value in the substantial repricing that these markets have seen.
Cross-border activity is at a relatively low level and is primarily intra-region. With US investors largely absent from the market German, Irish and British investors accounted for nearly half the cross-border investment in H1 2009.
June was another strong month for investment in the German open-ended property funds, with positive net inflow of €867 million. This brings the year to date total to €3.15 billion and the sector has now almost reversed the huge cash outflows it suffered in October last year.
In terms of availability and take-up, the market has now started to reflect the economic environment. The office space currently available mainly consists of smaller units. This can be traced back to the fact that an increasing number of tenants have started to sublease or to downsize their office space.
Landlords used to hold on to high asking rents for a long time. However, lease negotiations are more and more characterized by reasonable rent allowances to tenants.
The ECB has considerably improved the refinancing environment for banks over the last couple of month through the continued lowering of rates, increase of liquidity supply and lately through direct intermediation in the capital markets – the so called quantitative easing. In this issue we would like to expand our review of the financial markets by looking briefly at the refinancing risks resulting out of maturing German loans that have been securitised through CMBS structures.
The European commercial real estate investment market saw a slight upturn during the second quarter of the year with turnover reaching € 13 billion. This represents a 12% increase from the € 11.6 billion transacted in Q1 2009, but a 37% decline compared with Q4 2008.
The first quarter of 2009 has seen a significant decline in take-up in the European data centre market. Overall take-up for Quarter 1 was 11,020 m², the lowest quarter recorded since Quarter 2 2006 and the lowest first quarter since our statistics began.
Sentiment towards the German Openended Funds sector continues to be upbeat, with the re-opening of CS EUROREAL on 1st July and the BVI reporting May net inflows close to €700 million. This brings the yearto-date inflows to €2.28 billion, an encouraging result for the sector as a whole, and in particular for the eight remaining ‘closed’ funds.
Unexpectedly, May 2009 turned out to be an eventful month for the German Openended Fund sector. The reopening of SEB ImmoInvest fund came as a surprise to many, despite an earlier announcement highlighting their intentions to do so. It is the third fund to reopen since the mass redemptions forced 12 of the 46 funds into temporary closures in October 2008.
Following a sharp contraction of worldwide economic activity in Q4 2008, the commercial real estate market turned in a negative performance in Q1 2009. The depth and speed of the decline varied across markets and regions, but the direction was the same. CBRE’s quarterly Global MarketView analyzes global economic trends and their impact on commercial real estate. Looking ahead, we expect the remainder of 2009 to be extremely challenging.
The foundation of the global economy has been tested to a degree not seen since the Great Depression. What began as a U.S. housing crisis quickly became a worldwide financial crisis.
Deutschland stellt hinsichtlich der Wirtschaftskraft und der absoluten Bevölkerungszahl die größte Volkswirtschaft innerhalb der EU dar und ist im internationalen Vergleich überdurchschnittlich industrialisiert. Darüber hinaus war Deutschland 2008 zum wiederholten Male Exportweltmeister. Im europäischen Vergleich nimmt Deutschland eine zentrale Rolle im Logistiksektor ein und ist aufgrund der geografischen Lage, der gut ausgebauten Infrastruktur und einem relativ moderaten Mietniveau im Vergleich zu anderen EU-Ländern sehr attraktiv.
Die unmittelbaren Auswirkungen der Rezession haben in Deutschland mittlerweile deutliche Spuren im realwirtschaftlichen Sektor hinterlassen. Diese Entwicklung machte auch vor den Toren Münchens nicht Halt. Waren zu Beginn der Krise noch vorwiegend Unternehmen aus dem Finanzsegment betroffen, so wurden durch den sukzessiven Konjunkturabschwung inzwischen nahezu alle Branchen in Mitleidenschaft gezogen. In München ist zwar langfristig davon auszugehen, dass die Stadt nachhaltig von ihren Standortprivilegien wie der überdurchschnittlichen Kaufkraft (Index 136,8) sowie besten Bildungs-, Lebens- und Arbeitsbedingungen profitieren wird, die zurückhaltenden Wirtschaftsprognosen für Gesamtdeutschland trüben aber den Blick auf die nahe Zukunft ein.
2007/2008 lag der Umsatz auf Rekordniveau – nun Rückkehr zur Normalität: Umsatzvolumen liegt im ersten Quartal bei 45.300 m² (- 28 %). Der Flächenumsatz wird sich weiterhin auf diesem zwar geringeren, jedoch bei langfristiger Betrachtung „normaleren“ Niveau einpendeln
Economic downturn begins to bite: The impacts of the credit crunch and subsequent economic downturn are now clearly feeding through into the retail sector. Consumer and retailer confidence is weak and retail rents are now also generally in decline.
Investment market turnover fell to €11.3 billion, the weakest European quarterly activity level in the last five years
Capital Values continued to decline across all sectors. At the end of Q1 2009 the year-on-year falls in EU-27 Indices were around 20% for all three sectors
The economic outlook continues to weaken across all of the European markets, muting the outlook for occupier markets. The next stage in capital value declines will be mainly driven by rental falls.
As expected, the European commercial real estate investment market continued to see a fall in turnover, with activity in the first quarter of 2009, totaling € 11.5 billion. This level of activity marks a sharp decline from the value of transactions completed in Q4 2008 (which saw market activity of € 20.6 billion) and reflects the impact of the Lehman’s collapse on investor sentiment.
The latest BVI results posted positive net inflows into the German Open-ended Funds, with €271 million invested in March. This brings the year-to-date total to just over €1 billion, which contrasts with substantial outflows from most other Publikumsfonds, such as equity, bond and money market funds. However, the comparison is slightly skewed as ten out of the 46 open-ended funds, making up almost a third of the GOEF sector by value, remain temporarily closed to redemptions.
EMEA ViewPoint
Are property market adjustments getting faster?
The current downturn has been described as the first recession of the globalised age. The world economic system is now characterised by rapid, almost instantaneous, information transmission within and between national economies that are ever more closely interconnected. Price inefficiencies and anomalies should therefore be more readily identifiable and likely to be traded away quickly.
This report is designed to provide our clients with an immediate view on prime rents and yields across major markets and sectors in the region as at the end of the quarter.
During the course of 2008, carrier neutral colocation operators continued their growth plans through expanding existing sites, building out undeveloped properties and announcing intentions to develop new schemes. All of the five largest European players showed an appetite for continuing to develop floorspace in established markets, underpinning the positive sentiment towards the health of the colocation industry and the favourable balance seen between supply and demand of European technical floorspace.
After two months of positive net inflows, the February results slipped into negative territory, with -€33 million net withdrawals reported from the German Open-ended Fund industry. Whilst January results tend to be positive due to reinvestments taking place that month, February’s outflows highlight the fact that, in common with other investors, GOEFs too face challenges in the current market climate.
Who pays for green?
The Economics of Sustainable Buildings - EMEA Research 2009
The prominent role of real estate is increasingly recognised in the wider debate on climate change. A significant proportion of carbon emissions come from commercial and residential buildings, and legislation at national and European levels is driving changes to building specifications in an attempt to address this.
EMEA View-Point March 2009
European Property: Back to Basics?
The European real estate market is clearly in a period of significant change. The financial engineering, high levels of gearing and yield compression that were such a feature of previous years are now a thing of the past. Instead, investors will be focussing on long-term performance and the more conventional ways of generating returns: buying quality buildings in good locations that benefit from strong occupier demand and rental growth; and adding value to investments through active management of the physical property and its tenancy characteristics.
Having seen positive net inflows of €861 million in December 2008, the €789 million reported in January was a reassuring message for the German Openended Funds.
Düsseldorf - die Schöne am Rhein, als Messe- und Modestadt in der internationalen Modebranche bekannt, besticht sie vor allem durch ihre städtebauliche Kompaktheit, ihr kaufkräftiges Publikum aus Stadt und Umland und nicht zuletzt durch die Königsallee, liebevoll auch "Die Kö" genannt, als das Aushängeschild für das internationale Luxussegment in Nordrhein-Westfalen.
München ist die Primadonna aller deutschen Einzelhandelsstädte - sehr schön anzuschauen, aber auch kompliziert und teuer. Keine andere Stadt bietet in Deutschland eine solche Breite und Tiefe im Einzelhandelsangebot für die wohlhabende Bevölkerung Münchens und Umgebung sowie die nationalen und internationalen Touristen.
Frankfurt zählt mit seinen rund 657.000 Einwohnern zu den größten und wirtschaftskräftigsten Städten Deutschlands. Als Metropole im Rhein-Main-Gebiet (ca. 5,3 Millionen Menschen) ist Frankfurt vor allem Business- und Messestadt.
Das Motto der Stadt "Hamburg - Die wachsende Stadt" ist nicht nur ein Slogan, sondern ein klarer, empirisch nachweisbarer Trend - der sich über mehr als das bloße Einwohnerwachstum definiert.
Retail investment market turnover fell by 45% year-on-year. Activity was lower nearly everywhere, although Russia, Netherlands and Denmark did see increased turnover.
Average deal size fell to €31 million and almost 87% of all deals in 2008 were for less than €50 million. However, the retail sector did see two of the largest deals in Europe in 2008.
Cross-border investment fell to 51% of the market. However, the proportion of cross-border activity in the shopping centre sector stayed at 66%.
Investment market turnover fell by 53% year-on-year. Activity was lower in all markets, with the only exception being Russia where it was on a par with that in 2007.
Average deal size fell to €29 million and almost 87% of all deals in 2008 were for less than €50 million. Only four deals over €1 billion were completed in 2008.
Cross-border investment fell to 44% of the market. German, American and British investors remained the top three most active international buyers in 2008, but in value terms American activity fell very sharply.
With economic conditions deteriorating across Europe, demand is softening, with large-unit requirements especially fragile
There is clearer evidence of downward pressure on rents – this will progressively take over from yield shifts as the key influence on values
Core districts remain supplyconstrained in some markets, but occupiers are now showing greater locational flexibility
Credit conditions remain tight despite widespread government intervention. The resulting lack of new development starts will constrain supply growth in the medium term
Beginning with the U.S. sub-prime dislocation in the summer of 2007, market conditions deteriorated into a severe global credit crisis, which effectively shut down the global economy in the fourth quarter of 2008.
There was a positive end to 2008 for the German Open-ended Funds, with BVI results posting €861 million net inflows into the sector for December. This is higher than the net inflows reported back in both December 2006 and 2007, when investor sentiment towards the GOEFs was very strong.
For the majority of multi-asset investors commercial real estate forms a relatively small part of their portfolio. The vast majority tends to be concentrated in bonds (both government and corporate) and equities. However, the credit crunch and subsequent economic recession have had a dramatic affect on asset values in all sectors. Therefore as they look forward asset allocators will be considering what distribution of assets will produce the best results.
We witnessed a high level of take up in the first three quarters of 2008 with the data centre market performing beyond our expectations and reaching 93,000 sq m (1.0 million sq ft) across the five tier 1 markets.
Net outflows of -€721 million were reported in November, bringing the year-to-date net inflows into the negative territory;
Ironically it was the funds that are ‘temporarily closed to redemptions’ who registered positive net inflows in November. This was due to continuous flows of money from monthly payment plans;
KanAm grundinvest Fonds was the first fund to announce a one-off revaluation of its entire portfolio. It is now a matter of time to see if other fund managers follow suit;
GOEFs stayed active in the investment market: AXA, DEKA, CGI and Union Investment were particularly active buyers over the last two months of the year.
This report is designed to provide our clients with an immediate view on prime rents and yields across major markets and sectors in the region as at the end of the quarter.
The net cash outflows from the German Open-ended Funds in October reached -€5.06 billion. In light of 12 funds closures to redemptions in the last week of October such outcome was expected.
Global Market View Office Occupancy Costs November 2008
The average rate of growth for office occupancy costs among the 172 markets monitored in the survey was 8%, almost double last year’s world inflation rate. Up 94.6%, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) had by far the fastest growing occupancy costs, with three of the top five fastest growing countries situated in the Middle East.
Retail investment activity in Europe totalled €6.2 billion in Q3 2008, a decline of 12% relative to the previous quarter. This was in slight contrast to the overall commercial real estate market, where Q3 turnover was broadly equal to Q2 levels.
The National Statistical Office announced year-on-year (y-o-y) GDP growth of 7.6% in Q2 2008. This is in line with consistent GDP growth in the last few years, which has resulted in Slovakia having one of the highest GDP growth rates in Europe. GDP growth has been, in part, supported by increased spending, while increases to wages have slightly outstripped increases in production output, and further decreasing unemployment has also facilitated this.
The latest BVI data shows that the net cashflows to the German Open-ended Funds in September were -€238 million, the first negative total since October 2007.
The German Open-ended Funds (GOEFs) are clearly benefiting from current market conditions. The credit crunch has taken many investors out of the property market as the availability of debt has become restricted and expensive. The power is now in hands of equity players, like the GOEFs, who have become one of the most prominent buyers in the global investment market.
The net inflows into the German Open-ended Fund sector continued strong, with €1.2 billion invested in July. This brings the total to €5.3 billion net inflows over the first seven months of the year reported on so far.
During H1 2008, only 8,400 sq m of new space was completed in Brno. New developments coming to the market within the next 6 months represent 14,100 sq m. However, increased development activity should resume in 2009 .
One of the clearest trends in Q2 2008 was that the effect of the credit crunch on prime yields spread more widely across Europe, in terms of both location and sector.
Occupier demand is weakening across the European office markets, and vacancy beginning to rise. Prime rents are static in most markets and under downward pressure in some.
Half-way into the year the net inflows to the German Open-ended Fund sector have reached €4.1 billion. The level of net cash ainflows has slowed in the second quarter to €984 million, compared to almost €3.1 billionb in Q1.
Financial Services and European Office Markets August 2008
The global credit squeeze has a variety of potential impacts on commercial property markets, one of which is reduced demand for space from financial services.
Demand for office space weakened across Europe, with adverse impacts on prime rents and vacancy rates in some locations. Upward movement in prime yields continues to spread across Europe.
CB Richard Ellis`global team of researchers is pleased to provide the industry with our semi-annual analysis of the level and direction of global office market rents and occupancy costs.
The February cash inflow into the German Open-ended Funds was just slightly lower than that recorded in January, reaching the high level for a February of €1.2 billion.
