As we grind our way to the end of a tough year, a new tremor of uncertainty can be detected rippling through the commercial real estate industry. Not, we hasten to add, from the broker community, disturbing numbers of whom are buying readily into the notion of an imminent return to ‘normality’.

Perhaps it’s understandable – transactions, after all, are the life blood of the brokerage and advisory industry. But an up-tick in trading volumes in the third and fourth quarters of this year is no basis for assuming that property prices have reached a new equilibrium, and it’s upwards from here.  We are uncomfortable, too, with the now widely accepted notion that, since the wave of distressed selling in Germany has been conspicuous by its absence, it no longer poses an immediate threat. Continue Reading