In mid-March, when COVID-19 challenged every aspect of ‘normal’, the European higher education and student housing industries entered an unpredictable time with regards to knowing how best to secure positive learning and living experiences. Given the nearly daily changes accompanying the situation, many higher education institutions and student housing operators chose to follow an active co-learning path, flexible scenario-planning and making bold decisions when necessary. During the summer, Bonard and The Class of 2020 launched a joint research project with the aim to provide as accurate and up-to-date information as possible to assist industry leaders in making further strategic decisions to create more sustainable knowledge ecosystems for global talent amidst the pandemic.

The coronavirus crisis has led to a significant shift in the investment strategies of institutional real estate investors. “Lower risk, lower return” is the mantra of the moment. 58% of the 150 professional investors in Germany, France and the UK surveyed by Union Investment for its investment climate study are currently pursuing such a strategy. The figure was just 35% prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. The shift is especially pronounced in the UK, where security is the main investment motive for 79% of those surveyed. Before the pandemic, it was 50%. Nonetheless, there is no general reluctance to invest. Only five% of the European investors in the survey intend to avoid all investment in real estate in the current phase.

New research from Cushman & Wakefield has identified Berlin, Reykjavik, Oslo, Warsaw, Zurich, Milan, Vienna, Madrid and Prague as emerging hotspots for data centre development in Europe. The European data centre market has long been dominated by the ‘FLAP-D’ markets of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin, cities with their own deep business and financial sectors to serve. While these markets are still critical to the data centre ecosystem as entry points - and with over 500 MW of construction underway among them - interest in the FLAP-D markets is now competing with physical limitations including a lack of energy to power the centres, limited stock and a need to be closer to regional users.

Kajima Properties Europe and Savills Investment Management have launched a new strategic partnership with the completion of the acquisition of Panattoni Europe’s interest in the 144,880 sqm Łódź City VI logistics park in Central Poland.

New housing has become more expensive in most European countries over the last years, including 2019. Among 23 countries participating in Deloitte Property Index Study, 20 showed growth in prices of new dwellings and only three of them saw a price decrease. Experts in the residential real estate market expected the growth trend to continue in 2020, but they became less optimistic in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, in almost half of participating countries, the residential market is expected to stagnate this year in terms of price and experts in only six countries have positive expectations.

Banks in Europe are expecting a slow recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while they forecast that hotel and retail loan portfolios will likely be hit more considerably than office and other real estate asset classes, the majority of them believes that the impairment will be in the range of a few percentage points up to 10% in total. These are some of the early findings from the COVID-specific section of this year's edition of KPMG's Property Lending Barometer, due to be published in autumn 2020.

Industrial property specialist Gazeley announced that it is adopting the GLP brand name following its acquisition by the global investment manager in 2017. In addition, GLP announces that it has closed on the acquisition of Goodman Group’s Central and Eastern European logistics real estate portfolio.

Results from the INREV Quarterly Index for the first quarter of 2020 reveal initial signs of the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the European real estate industry, with the lowest quarterly performance since Q4 2012.

According to Savills, the average spread between prime industrial and prime shopping centre yields across mainland Europe has converged for the first time in its historic series as demand for logistics and soars as a result of increased levels in e-commerce.

Warsaw is among the top 10 European cities for the fintech sector. According to Savills, which prepared the ranking, the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the digitalisation of the banking sector and Poland provides a favourable environment for fintechs to expand.