Institutional Views on European Commercial Real Estate

European commercial real estate (CRE) is being reshaped by a relatively small group of capital-heavy players: pension plans investing globally, sovereign wealth funds and a handful of large managers who may act as their partners. 

These investors, individually managing tens of billions in real estate alone, are not in the business of accumulating assets for the sake of size. Their capital must compete directly with equities, fixed income and infrastructure. Real estate must earn its place in their portfolios by delivering superior, risk-adjusted returns and a clear role in long-term asset allocation (either as an inflation hedge or portfolio diversifier). 

This paper distils the perspectives of these institutions on European CRE. It explores how they think about scale, the evolving role of funds, allocation decisions, the redefinition of “core”, sector preferences, deployment timing and the governance frameworks they demand. Rather than recounting a panel discussion, it presents a coherent view of what “real money” wants from European real estate over the next investment cycle. 

Scale, Alpha and the Nature of Institutional Capital 

The first distinguishing feature of these investors is the sheer size and growth of their capital pools. National pension schemes funded by mandatory contributions and sovereign wealth funds backed by commodity revenues or fiscal surpluses generate a constant inflow of new money. The result is a structural need to deploy capital at scale. 

An initial investment must often support a ticket in the hundreds of millions of euros, with a clear route to doubling or tripling that exposure within a few years. Smaller, one-off deals may be attractive in isolation but simply do not move the needle. 

Capital is not granted to real estate by default. Most institutions assess CRE against a liquid benchmark, as an example a mixed global-equity and fixed-income portfolio, or a real-return target like inflation plus several hundreds of basis points. 

If real estate cannot consistently deliver alpha over these benchmarks, the rational choice is to sell down the private portfolio and buy the benchmark instead. That mindset drives a distinctly private-equity-like approach to real estate: acquiring at scale, executing a value-creation plan, realising gains and then recycling capital. 

Fund Formation and the Changing Role of Managers 

Over the last decade, diversified global mega-funds have dominated real estate fundraising, but recent data show a clear shift in incremental capital toward sector specialist strategies. 

Sector specific funds, particularly in residential, logistics and data centres, have grown their share of total capital raised, tend to hit their fundraising targets more often and more quickly, and are being used by institutions to express targeted convictions rather than relying solely on one “do-everything” global manager. 

This shift has been enabled by the institutionalisation of the LP side. Many of the largest pension plans and sovereign wealth funds have significantly expanded their in-house private-markets teams, giving them the capability to originate and underwrite complex real estate transactions directly. 

Industry surveys show that, while non-listed funds remain the primary route into real estate, investors with sufficient scale are making increasing use of joint ventures, club deals and separate accounts alongside those funds, using these tailored structures to secure better alignment on strategy, governance and fees with a small number of operating partners. 

Funds are very much still at the centre of the market: non-listed commingled funds continue to attract roughly 60-65% of all capital raised for global and European real estate strategies, even after two slow fundraising years. Within that universe, however, investors are increasingly using specialist vehicles to access operationally complex or niche strategies such as residential, logistics and data centres, rather than relying only on broad, multi sector funds. 

Sector specific funds have grown their share of capital and, on average, are more likely to hit fundraising targets than diversified vehicles. The fundraising process itself has clearly lengthened, with fundraising average time in market rising from about 13 to 14 months in 2021 to more than 22 months, the longest on record. 

Against that backdrop, investor surveys and LP commentary indicate a strong preference for funds that are at least moderately seeded or backed by visible pipelines and co-investment opportunities, rather than purely “blank sheet” strategies. 

This matches the tone of the conference discussion, where several participants remarked that a concept and a slide deck are rarely enough today; many pension plans and sovereign wealth funds want to see real transactions in progress and will often tell managers to come back once they can show what they have actually executed. 

Allocation Without Quotas: Europe in a Global Portfolio 

The institutions on the panel all stressed that they don’t run rigid regional or sector quotas for real estate. Boards typically set a single global real estate target (around 10% of AUM for many investors), but within that bucket capital is steered by relative value, not “X% must be Europe” or “Y% must be offices”. 

Investors manage to an overall real estate target exposure and use regions and sectors with attractive fundamentals rather than fixed slices. Strategy papers from large pension plans and sovereign wealth funds also describe multi-continent real estate portfolios built around diversification and relative value across geographies and sectors, with listed and unlisted exposure used side by side where markets are deep enough. 

Within that flexible framework, Europe’s current appeal is not quota-driven. Europe and Asia-Pacific are becoming main destinations for investors looking to diversify away from US macro and interest-rate risk, citing advanced repricing and stronger prospective income returns. 

Recent research on European real estate for private equity investors also describes the region as a “go-to” market for value-add and opportunistic capital, given corrections in pricing and supportive policy trends. Non-European investors, especially from Asia Pacific, are an increasingly important source of capital for European strategies, reinforcing what panellists reported seeing on the ground in Korea and Japan. 

The UK’s position is more nuanced. Survey data has the UK back as the most preferred single European destination for non-listed strategies, ahead of Germany and France, reflecting deep repricing and perceived upside. Yet the panel described continued caution among some global LPs because of political and policy volatility, with a bias toward Continental Europe outside a few core UK markets like London. 

Taken together, both the data and the discussion suggest that Europe’s role in global portfolios is driven by evolving risk-adjusted return views, not by any fixed share that “must” be allocated to the region. 

Redefining “Core” in a Shifting Market 

Both the panel and recent market research agree that the old shorthand for core - a prime office in a gateway city on a 20-plus-year lease to a blue-chip tenant - no longer works. Hybrid working has weakened the demand story for many offices, higher interest rates have reduced the value of very long-duration income, and tightening ESG and building-quality standards are pushing a large slice of older stock toward functional obsolescence. 

Core is therefore being rethought less as “long lease equals low risk” and more as “durable income with manageable obsolescence and capex risk”. That naturally pushes investors toward assets where demand is underpinned by structural themes, logistics, data centres, modern residential, student and senior living, and toward operational models that can adjust pricing and occupancy rather than relying solely on fixed leases. 

For big pensions and sovereigns, this is an evolution rather than a revolution. Many never ran pure core strategies: with real-return benchmarks such as inflation plus 400 bps, they have long gravitated to core plus and value-add. What has changed, as several panellists noted, is the desire to smooth portfolio volatility after the recent repricing. 

Instead of giving up on higher-return strategies, they are embedding them in portfolios anchored by more stable income, sometimes including resilient but unfashionable retail and continental European living, accepting slightly lower headline growth in exchange for more predictable cash flow and a clearer story about what “core” really means today. 

Sector Preferences: Where Capital Wants to Be 

Across large institutional portfolios, a consistent pattern is emerging. Logistics has become a major allocation, underpinned by e-commerce, supply-chain reconfiguration and on-shoring. 

In many markets, tight land supply and planning constraints continue to support rents and values, so the question is less whether to own logistics and more what kind: how much to place in prime vs secondary locations, how to balance large regional hubs with last-mile urban facilities, and how far to tilt from development risk toward fully stabilised income. For some global investors, logistics is now one of the single largest exposures in their real estate book. 

Living sectors, multifamily, purpose-built student accommodation, senior housing and other forms of rental residential, form a second structural pillar. They offer defensive, often inflation-linked cash flows and are closely tied to demographic trends such as urbanisation, ageing populations and chronic housing shortages. 

Many investors are assembling or scaling pan-European platforms, usually with specialist local operators. There is a noticeable shift from pure development strategies toward portfolios of stabilised, professionally managed assets, reflecting a desire to increase the share of predictable income in overall returns while still retaining some scope for operational upside. 


A third major theme is data centres and digital infrastructure. What was once a niche is rapidly becoming a mainstream allocation, supported by surging demand from AI, cloud computing and streaming. At the same time, data centres remain technically complex: power procurement, grid connections, cooling, network latency and long-term contracts with hyperscale tenants all require specialist expertise. 

Many institutions acknowledge that they have less exposure here than public-market benchmarks would imply, which effectively leaves them “underweight” a structurally growing sector. The response has been to seek partnerships with experienced operators and platforms, even if the fund or JV structure is relatively new, provided the underlying operating business is credible and battle-tested. 

By contrast, offices and traditional retail are being managed more selectively. Office values in many markets have been hit hard by changing workplace patterns, higher interest rates and tightening ESG regulations, and some assets would require very heavy capital expenditure to remain competitive. 

As a result, investors are more willing to recycle long-held or non-prime offices and to concentrate remaining exposure in a small number of deep, liquid city markets where tenant demand and exit liquidity are judged to be most resilient. 

Retail is no longer written off wholesale, but capital is increasingly concentrated in formats with demonstrably robust income, necessity retail, dominant regional centres, retail parks and mixed-use schemes with strong local catchments, rather than in marginal shopping centres or weak high streets. 

The Rise of Operational Real Estate

Recent global surveys show a clear pivot toward assets with an operational component - everything from student housing, senior living and hotels to healthcare, self-storage, last-mile logistics and data centres. The trend toward operational assets now “permeates nearly all investment categories”. 

The appeal is straightforward: in a world where capital appreciation is more uncertain and higher interest rates have raised required returns, cash-flow growth matters more. Operational real estate offers the ability to manage income through pricing, occupancy and service levels rather than relying solely on fixed leases. 

Specialist reports on the sector emphasise that OPRE structures allow hands-on management of NOI/EBITDA and alignment between operator and owner returns, and that institutional investors are increasingly viewing these assets as a way to capture structural demand from demographics (ageing populations, housing shortages) and digitisation (cloud computing, AI, e-commerce) as well as cyclical rental growth. 

At the same time, they underline the importance of high-quality operators with strong technology, data and customer-analytics capabilities, because the operating business is now a primary driver of value rather than a bolt-on to the real estate. 

A related development is the rise of “build-to-core” or “create-core” strategies. Investors are using development and heavy asset management to create modern, ESG-compliant operational assets, then holding them as core and potentially selling into lower-cost-of-capital vehicles (when it returns to the market) once cash flows are seasoned. 

In this model, transitional or value-add student housing, healthcare, logistics or data-centre projects are assembled into institutional-grade platforms, stabilised and then either recycled or retained as the income anchor of a portfolio. 

Operational real estate thus offers both the growth engine - through development, repositioning and platform build-out - and a credible pathway to core-like income and exit liquidity, which is exactly what large performance-driven investors are seeking in the next phase of the cycle. 

Deployment Timing, Financing and Market Conditions 

The current macro environment - elevated but moderating interest rates, mixed growth signals and geopolitical tension - gives investors plenty of reasons to be cautious. Yet long-term institutions enjoy a degree of freedom that closed-end funds do not: they are not bound by fund lives or annual deployment quotas. They can afford to wait for clarity when needed, without rushing capital into markets simply to “put money to work.” 

Most report being active but measured. Capital is being deployed where conviction is highest and structure is favourable, but there is no sense of urgency. At the same time, financing conditions in Europe have improved noticeably, with banks that were on the sidelines during the immediate aftermath of rate increases now returning. 

For some recent acquisitions, lenders have gone from a sparse field of one or two to competitive lists numbering in double digits. This does not signal a return to pre-crisis exuberance, but it does indicate that debt is once again available on workable terms for well-underwritten assets. 

The dislocation in private-equity real estate - delayed exits, continuation funds and GP-led restructurings - is creating selective opportunities to acquire portfolios and platforms. Institutions are prepared to be the liquidity provider where they see genuine value. However, they insist that pricing must reflect new realities. 

Real estate is illiquid and operationally demanding. If the expected returns are not commensurate with that complexity, they will simply divert capital to other asset classes where the risk/return balance is superior. 

Governance, Control and Liquidity: Structures That Work

If there is one area where institutions have become much more demanding, it is governance and liquidity. They are increasingly comfortable delegating day-to-day operations to specialist managers; what they are not prepared to do is give up control over key strategic decisions, especially around exit. 

The lessons from past cycles are clear. In 50/50 joint ventures without robust exit provisions, investors have found themselves trapped in assets where their partner preferred to wait for a recovery that never quite materialised. That experience has hardened attitudes. New structures often include rights to initiate asset or portfolio sales, mechanisms to buy out a partner’s share, and clear time-based milestones for exit discussions. 

There is also a gradual refinement of where control is truly required. Historically, some institutions insisted on approving everything: budgets, leasing, capex, financing, acquisitions and disposals. That level of involvement consumes significant internal resources and can slow decision-making. 

Many are now adopting a “return on effort” lens. Where partner quality is high, leverage is modest and trading activity is limited, they are willing to grant greater delegated authority, reserving their own time for situations where capital at risk or complexity is greatest. The essential distinction is between operational control, which can be ceded, and strategic and liquidity control, which cannot. 

The preference for bespoke structures also explains a moderate retreat from broad commingled funds. Investors are more inclined to pursue co-control joint ventures with one other large institution, or platform investments anchored by a small number of aligned shareholders. 

The more parties involved, the harder it becomes to preserve aligned timing and governance. Consequently, the sweet spot is often a partnership of two capital providers and an operating partner, all of whom share similar horizons and return expectations. 

The Future of Core Capital 

A frequent question in the market is whether “core capital” will come back in the form that sponsors enjoyed in the previous cycle: buyers happy with 3-5% total returns for long-lease assets. 

The consensus among institutional investors is that such capital is unlikely to return at scale. The cost of capital across portfolios has reset. Government bond yields are structurally higher than they were in the era of quantitative easing, and investors are more conscious of inflation and structural change. 

Some core investors are still engaging or ready to engage, but their return requirements have risen. They still value stability and inflation protection, but they need a meaningful real return premium. Sellers waiting for the re-emergence of ultra-low-yield buyers may well be waiting in vain. 

Core in the coming decade is more likely to be defined as thematically powerful, operationally intensive and ESG-robust real estate, priced to offer a fair spread over sovereign bonds and corporate credit, rather than as static, bond-like office assets. 

Conclusion: What European Real Estate Must Offer 

For global pension plans and sovereign wealth funds, European CRE is an asset class that must constantly justify its share of the balance sheet. It does so successfully when it offers three things: scale, specialisation and genuine alpha. 

To attract and retain this capital, sponsors and managers in Europe need to present opportunities that can absorb substantial commitments without diluting returns, demonstrate credible edge in specific sectors or themes, and deliver value creation beyond simple yield compression. They must offer transparent, realistic business plans, backed by strong operations and modern technology, and embed governance and exit provisions that match institutional needs. 

Those who can align with these institutional priorities will find that long-term capital is not retreating from European real estate at all. On the contrary, it is ready, and in some cases eager, to deploy. But it will do so only on terms that reflect the new realities of risk, return and responsibility in a more complex world.
 

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