In a generally good first quarter for Europe, we saw better economic and financial market news and much improved confidence which started to produce a change in strategy, with parts of the investment community going “risk-on”. However, starting with Italy’s indecisive election and moving on to the Cypriot “bank sweep”, confidence has been dented in [...]
European investment markets saw a relatively strong end to last year according to our recent research. In fact volumes rose 19% compared to the final quarter of 2011 and were at their strongest since 2007. What’s more this was accompanied by a stabilisation in prime yields and a notable uptick in investor confidence. But is [...]
The third quarter of 2012 was not great for the European office sector with leasing and investment activity down and rental growth reversing. However anyone expecting a smooth, demand-driven recovery was pretty much waiting to be disappointed – the road back to any sort of normality was always going to be bumpy and unpredictable. Looking [...]
The Greek election result last month eased us back from the edge of a euro collapse but we still can’t say we have a clear view of where we go from here. The new Greek government may have to soft peddle on its demands to renegotiate its bailout for example- at least ahead of the [...]
Forget Spain for now, events in Greece over the next few days will be setting the tone for Europe for better or for worse. Greek voters go back to the polls on Sunday and clearly face a tough choice, caught between a rock and a hard place. Surveys have suggested growing support for pro-bailout parties [...]
Hopes that the Eurozone debt crisis was on its way to being resolved have clearly been hit by recent election results and this continues to test the nerves of the property market, with the opening quarter seeing a fall in leasing and investment activity that was far from limited to just the most indebted markets [...]
The office market in the Washington, D.C. Metro region was off to a slow start in 2012, with leasing activity down from last year at this time in both the Downtown and suburban markets. Negative absorption of 452,000 square feet (sf) in the District marked the second consecutive quarter of decreased absorption. The CBD submarket [...]
Recent events in Europe have been deeply destabilising but in time they could potentially lead to some quite welcome changes and could also produce some surprises. Starting with the latest “solution”, a deepening of fiscal links and controls between Eurozone members, this has been widely criticised for a lack of detail and also because it [...]
Northern California, that is. What’s happening in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley? Let me give you the short and sweet version. San Francisco job growth was 1.3% through August and job growth was a whopping 2.4% in Silicon Valley. This growth is not fake, fake, fake, like the dot.com era it’s real, [...]
The latest Cushman & Wakefield Occupier Conference in London revealed new research, the Insight 500 survey, emphasising the negative impact global economic uncertainty was having on corporate confidence and decision making. However, the conference was also warned by broadcaster Rene Carayol not to get too downhearted by overly negative media coverage. What is more, it was [...]