Institutional investors plan to increase their investment in European commercial property, but diverge on the opportunities created by the UK’s departure from the EU.
BrickVest found 40% of 99 investors it surveyed plan to allocate more money to the asset class in the next 12 months.
Sixty per cent felt Brexit was the biggest challenge, though 39% felt the UK’s exit from the EU would increase the number of investment opportunities in Europe.
Other challenges that featured strongly in the survey were political uncertainty, low economic growth, rising interest rates and rising inflation.
Despite the nearly 40% who felt Brexit would lead to investment opportunities in European property, 22% felt the number of investment opportunities would decrease.
BrickVest is a pan-European online crowd-investing platform regulated under the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive.
Emmanuel Lumineau, CEO at BrickVest, noted that commercial real estate has seen increased inflows from institutional investors for a number of years, making the asset class more mainstream.
But he added: “Clearly Brexit has created some uncertainties and will certainly present challenges for institutional real estate investors. However our research shows that European investors believe investment opportunities could increase.
“Since the vote in June last year, we’ve seen a huge increase in the number of investors joining the platform. We are experiencing strong levels of demand from investors for property as an asset class and it is clear that many of our users want to take advantage of the vote.”
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