Market Trends 2024. Ready for re-leveraging? Commercial Real Estate in 2025.
Date & Time: | November 20, 2024 7:45 am | Add to Calendar (.ics) |
Venue: | BDO International |
Breakfast will be served from 7.45am. The discussion will follow at 8.15am and conclude around 9.30am.
This is the 17th successive year that CULS has held this extremely popular panel discussion on the current state of the commercial property market.
Real estate investment markets have experienced significant shifts in the underlying drivers in recent years. Mostly these have been driven by macroeconomic conditions, including rising interest rates as a response to spiking inflation, and a general economic malaise that has permeated most markets. Confidence has been dented to levels not seen since 2011 or 2012, with the lack of available financing, at sensible pricing levels, being one of the primary issues. An oddity that has emerged in this cycle is that market rents have continued to climb, even for offices, while investor confidence remains on the floor. The turnaround, which is edging closer and closer, will be driven at least as much by debt, as by occupier demand.
Our panel will discuss their outlook for 2025, outlining what will drive a market that is being shaped rather differently to other cycles in living memory.
Chair: Colm Lauder – Co-Founder, Lauder Teacher Associates
Colm Lauder is a co-founded Lauder Teacher Associates, alongside Andrew Teacher (who previously founded Blackstock Consulting), an international strategic consultancy business in the real estate, housing, and built environment sectors. Colm advises some of the UK’s largest listed and private investors and developers on communication, strategy, allocation, communications, and investor relations. Prior to LTA, Colm built and led the real estate desk at investment bank Goodbody and previously spent time at market analytics house IPD and agents DTZ (now Cushman & Wakefield). Colm holds a MPhil in Real Estate Finance from Cambridge.
Confirmed speakers:
Alison Puhar – Head of Portfolio Management, European Real Estate, Fidelity International
Alison Puhar is Head of Portfolio Management for European Real Estate at Fidelity International, with responsibility for the real estate investment team in Europe including the UK and is Lead Portfolio Manager for the Fidelity UK Real Estate Fund.
Alison joined Fidelity International in 2007 from Savills Investment Management where she was Head of UK Institutional Pooled Funds and Fund Director for The Charities Property Fund. During her career Alison has worked with some of the UK’s largest pension schemes, private family estates and charities, with responsibility for investment strategy, investment transactions and asset management.
Alison is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and read Economics and Land Economy at Cambridge University. She also holds an MBA from The Open University. On graduating from Cambridge University, she became a Research Fellow at the Levy Economics Institute in New York, prior to joining Savills.
Alexandra Thur – Founder, Tollington Group
Alexandra founded Tollington Group in 2021, identifying the ongoing needs of real estate developers to access more institutional-level capital and professional investors to allocate capital to quality real estate projects. By guiding the concept, strategy and positioning of a firm’s unique capital and investment requirements, Tollington expands access to more creatively structured debt and equity.
Prior to Tollington Group, Alexandra was the youngest founding team member and equity partner of two Blackstone Group portfolio companies, Invitation Homes, America’s largest single-family owner-manager, and B2R Finance (now Finance of America), the first private “buy-to-let” lender in the US. She subsequently co-founded a UK residential ground rent investment firm, which specialised in building portfolios of secure, long-income assets that were sold to pension funds.
Alexandra holds a MPhil from the University of Cambridge and a BSc from University College London.
Simon Brown – Head of UK Office Research, CBRE
Simon Brown is the Head of UK Office Research at CBRE, covering investment and occupier markets across the country. He has 15 years’ experience in the UK real estate industry. Simon leads a team of four research professionals within the wider CBRE UK Research team, producing a variety of industry-leading data-led publications and thought leadership across a variety of subjects relating to UK office markets.
Simon supports a number of core CBRE client accounts.
An experienced public speaker, Simon regularly presents to a wide range of audiences globally on the subject of the UK office markets.
Nick is an experienced leader in the valuation of commercial and residential real estate in the UK market with 30 years experience of proving valuation advice across all sectors to a broad range of clients and is trusted by many market participants. Nick sits on the CBRE UK Executive Board and is responsible for the day to day running of a team of 350 valuation professionals in the UK and Ireland. Nick is committed to maintaining the highest ethical and technical standards in the valuation industry.
Valuation is the cornerstone of the real estate industry and has a key role to play in attracting capital, driving economic growth and the efficient working of the market. Valuation is thus integral to the reputation and trust of the UK economy on the global stage.
Nick Cripps – Head of UK Capital Markets, Panattoni
Nick is an Executive Director, Capital Markets Europe and is Head of the UK Capital Markets team, with responsibilities for the capitalisation of projects across the UK and Europe. With his role in capital formation for the Group, Nick is an integral part of the Global Capital Markets network and works closely with Panattoni’s international operating platform helping originate and structure capital solutions, and manage global and Pan-European investor relationships.