JLL chief executive Christian Ulbrich remains convinced there is plenty of cash to be invested in real estate, despite the firm seeing revenues from its capital markets activity fall by 37% to $805.1m (£633.9m) in the six months ended 30 June.
The agent, which joined its peers in reporting continued declines in capital markets income, said there was some $380bn of available capital yet to be deployed globally in the commercial real estate sector.
This, said Ulbricht, helped keep JLL to its “clear conviction” that “people want to get their money into real estate”.
He said: “Within our industry, the economic environment has caused investors to become more cautious and in certain instances have delayed the closing time line for transactions.
“Still, the tailwinds supporting our industry remain intact, labour markets continue to perform well and unemployment rates are low.”
He added: “There’s sufficient liquidity in the market and a significant amount of capital yet to be deployed in the commercial real estate space. Once investors gain comfort with the future path of interest rates, we expect this capital to drive an acceleration in capital markets activities.
“In addition, a record number of lease expirations will occur in the coming years, supporting future leasing activity. These factors combined with the resiliency of our industry bodes well for long-term growth prospects.”
Ulbrich said that the business expected the US to bounce back stronger than European and Asian markets, which would be “more muted” over the next couple of months.
“We believe that the US market will perform the strongest of all our markets,” he said. “But even for the US market, we expect slightly muted activity until after Labour Day.
“Then the big question is how the market is returning, especially for the fourth quarter. That is highly dependent on what our clients will do in the fourth quarter.”
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