In a video interview recorded at CEE Property Forum 2025 in Vienna, Christopher Mertlitz, Managing Director, Head of European Investments at W. P. Carey, talks about recent and upcoming deals and shares his expectations for the year ahead.
What are your expectations for commercial real estate for the year ahead?
Looking at 2026 and the overall outlook for the real estate industry, the sector we focus on most is sale-and-leaseback transactions. These are primarily used by businesses to raise capital — whether for new business initiatives, debt reduction or a range of other strategic reasons.
Within this particular niche of the real estate market, the outlook for 2026 is actually quite strong. We are seeing many corporations with both the desire and the need to invest, and given the development of interest rates and alternative sources of capital, more and more businesses are becoming interested in using their own real estate as a funding source.
Overall, my outlook for 2026 is positive. This is supported by our deal pipeline, which is already shaping up very nicely for next year, as well as by the level of investment activity that has been building throughout this year.
Are there any details you can share about your deal pipeline?
Recently, we actually announced the closing of a sale-and-leaseback transaction that is very typical for us. It was a multi-jurisdictional deal across three countries — the UK, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
It involved a portfolio owned by a private equity-backed food manufacturer, with multiple assets across several countries. It was quite a complex transaction, but this is exactly the type of deal we focus on. We tend to operate in a less crowded space, where there is more complexity — either related to the underlying business or to the importance, or mission-critical nature, of the real estate to the tenant.
In these transactions, real estate is a key functional component, but it always sits within a broader context of what the company wants to achieve, whether that is capital raising or another strategic objective.
So you make your decisions based on opportunities rather than countries?
That’s a very interesting point. A sale-and-leaseback is fundamentally a business model, and it is extremely portable. Of course, geography matters — location always matters in real estate. As people like to say, location, location, location. In the sale-and-leaseback world, however, I would argue it’s more about credit, credit, credit.
The deal itself is a form of capital raising. Real estate is a critical element, but it is not the sole driver of the transaction. We allocate capital on a pan-European basis, and we also invest in North America and other regions. In fact, we have investments in around 25 countries globally.
At a certain level, we are quite country-agnostic. Of course, geography plays a role in underwriting, risk analysis and pricing, but we remain very open in terms of where we invest, because the business model itself is highly transferable.
