Companies in Europe this year have signed new leases for office space at a faster rate than at any time since the start of the 2008 financial crisis, a sign of improving corporate sentiment that could benefit property investors betting on rising rents across the region. Madrid, Berlin, Prague and Warsaw all have seen an uptick in companies signing new office leases this year, pushing vacancy levels down, according to data from real-estate broker CBRE Group Inc. ...
The commercial property market across Europe is picking up, with office-leasing volumes up 15% in the first nine months of 2015, against the previous year. Additionally, the office vacancy rate is approaching the all time low of 9.1% achieved in 2008; it stood at 7.1% in 3Q. The improving volumes is attracting new levels of investment from the US, with Morgan Stanley spending or planning to spend about 50% of its private equity real estate fund in Europe, while investment in US property accounts for only 5% of spending. This suggests that while Europe's property markets have been slower to recover from the financial crisis than those in the US, a sustained period of low-level growth is now expected.