Over £2 billion transactions

Cordea Savills transacted a record £2.1 billion (EUR 2.6 billion) in Europe in 2014. Given the positive real estate environment, purchases of £1.8 billion outnumbered sales of over £300 million, resulting in net investment of £1.5 billion. 

This reflected strong capital raising activity in the year and takes assets under management to £5.5 billion (EUR 7 billion as at December 2014).

With positive returns across most markets, 2014 was an attractive entry point to deploy capital. However, not all markets were running at the same speed. The UK property market being the most liquid and transparent, was one of the earlier movers, having turned positive in the last quarter of 2013. It is now considered to be moving towards the tail end of its property cycle. UK property returns in 2015 are still anticipated to be in positive territory but at the low double digit end of the spectrum, in the 10-12% range. Most northern European property markets reacted approximately 6-9 months after the UK and therefore still have some way to go. As a result, Cordea Savills’ acquisition activity was biased towards Europe with acquisitions of £1.1 billion versus £659 million in the UK. Similarly, UK disposals exceeded those in Europe, £283 million and £32 million respectively. In total, the team executed 73 transactions, a combination of individual and portfolio deals.

Kiran Patel, Chief Investment Officer, commented:

“Cordea Savills continues to remain active in the UK and the European property markets. We still have over £350 million of outstanding capital to deploy. Our focus will remain towards core plus transactions with a strong emphasis on income durability and income growth. In some parts of the market, given the positioning in the cycle, we will look to bank profits and either redeploy or hand back capital.”