The Beach Season is Starting…

Dear Reader,

The time has comes again to be honest with ourselves. Here is why: The beach season is about to start. Or should we say it has already started with everyone’s favourite event on the Côte d’Azur!

The perfect time to check whether and where our portfolio has gained weight before we proceed to … well, that is precisely the question.

What is the best way to handle the triad of rising interest rates, funding difficulties and tightening regulations? Ignore it? That is getting more and more difficult to do. Sell? That would hurt. Deal with it? Precisely.

Although I’m no expert for stranded real estate assets, I’m always good for a suggestion: Would this not be a good time for the body politic to lend a helping hand for once? In analogy to the banking sector, I could imagine a special government fund that applies plausible criteria (possibly defined by the “gif” research society for the German real estate industry) to buy up stranded assets at fair market prices, brings them back into shape with the help of industry specialists or else recycles them in optimal ways before putting them back on the market. It would have all sorts of benefits: A predictable risk for property asset holders, a calming effect on the market, a reduction in the number of stranded assets and of the associated corporate insolvencies. In my opinion, it would be a sensible way to support the real estate sector. Time for a shout-out therefore to the German Property Federation as the sector’s top tier interest group: “It’s over to you, ZIA!”

High time to act: “It’s over to you, ZIA!”

If this makes you wonder whether all that Mediterranean sunshine in Cannes has messed with my head: I readily admit that a number of details would have to be sorted out first. And yet …

Until the next issue, please stay safe and sound!

Yours, Stefan Stüdemann

IMHO! | a column by Stefan Stüdemann

IMHO! | a column by Stefan Stüdemann appears regularly in Immobilien-FondsNews. You can receive the leading newsletter for the institutional real estate industry free of charge via the FondsForum website FondsForum.

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