Real estate investment plummets across Europe - retail falls off a cliff, but hotels stay buoyant

CBRE has published research in the Estates Gazette on 13 August 2019 showing that major European cities have suffered a sharp fall in real estate investment during the first half of 2019, compared to the first half of 2018.

Although London has suffered, with real estate investment falling by about a third from €15.84bn to €10.56bn, major cities elsewhere in Europe have fared even worse. CBRE report that the worst affected among Europe's largest cities were Madrid, where investment volumes fell by 53% to €1.91bn and in Munich, with a 45.8% drop down to €2.05bn.  That will doubtless be a topic of discussion at EXPO Real - the Teutonic answer to MIPIM - which is being hosted in Munich in October 2019.

Investment in retail real estate has been particularly badly hit, falling by 41% from €26.98bn to €15.94bn.

Those familiar with the counter-cyclical nature of hotel investment will not be surprised to see hotels as the sole real estate sector in Europe bucking the trend, with volumes of €11bn in the first half of 2018, creeping up by 2% to €11.22bn in the first half of 2019.

Maybe with all the doom and gloom around Brexit and trade wars, we could all do with a holiday...