Measured in euros, European commercial property had a weak first half of 2026, with MSCI’s transaction data recording a 10% fall in deal volume compared with the same period a year earlier. Industrial investment reached its lowest first-half level since 2017, and office activity was still running at roughly half the pace of the previous market cycle.
In Germany, by contrast, deals recorded on the due diligence platform Drooms in the first half of 2026 already equalled about 75% of the platform’s total for the whole of 2025, according to Drooms data reported by Financial Investigator in September. If that pace holds to the end of the year, Germany could see 50% more property transactions in 2026 than in 2025 by Drooms’ measure, after an increase of only about 4% between 2024 and 2025. Across Europe as a whole, Drooms put the potential rise on the same basis at around 27%.
Counting Deals Instead of Euros
Headline investment totals move with the size of the deals behind them. A few very large transactions in either direction can shift a half-year figure by billions. Each completed transaction marks a buyer and a seller who have agreed on price, and a rising count shows that agreement spreading across more of the market, from large portfolios down to single buildings in regional cities.
Germany’s deal count had barely changed from one year to the next for several years. Drooms’ chief executive put the new momentum down to one of two things, either buyers and sellers getting better at settling on a price or sellers coming under enough pressure to accept one. On either reading, the market had started to clear.
CBRE recorded German investment of just under €16.2 billion in the first half of 2026, up 13% on the previous year, so value rose alongside the number of deals. The total was spread across 800 transactions with an average size of around €20 million, a scale at which no single deal could carry the half-year figure on its own.
Buyers Driving the Recovery
CBRE’s head of research for Germany judged that buyers and sellers were finding common ground on price more easily than in 2025. He linked the recovery to the country’s seven largest cities, to large office transactions and to portfolio deals in care and healthcare, logistics and residential property. Elsewhere in Europe, the MSCI data showed apartments as the only major sector to record strong growth in the first half, driven by consolidation among UK student housing owners and demand in the Netherlands and Spain. Spain moved past France into third place in the European investment rankings. Stronger growth and a rising population drew institutional capital there from North America and Northern Europe. Some segments were trading well above their long-run pace, with MSCI finding deal volumes above their 10-year average in UK and Spanish apartments, Italian retail and Spanish offices, segments in which scarce space and strong tenant demand were lifting rents.
Investors that kept acquiring while the market was quiet arrive at a turning point with teams, lending relationships and local knowledge already in place. They can move quickly on the smaller and mid-sized assets that make up much of any rise in transaction numbers. Among them are privately owned groups with the capital flexibility to keep buying through the downturn, whose ability to act did not rely on raising a new fund. In comments reported by IPE Real Assets, MSCI’s head of EMEA real assets research said the firm’s data show investors who enter at the start of an upturn have historically done better than those who wait.
Count Still Lags in Places
In the UK, the number of completed office and retail transactions fell to its weakest first-half level on record, MSCI found, even as the country held its place as Europe’s largest investment market. MSCI also counted fewer active investors across Europe. In the same data, cross-border investment into Europe fell to its lowest level since 2013. Paris activity was down by around a fifth. Asian buyers cut their European acquisitions by close to 65%. Borrowing costs added pressure in London, where central office yields moved back above 6% for the first time since 2024. Drooms found that European transactions processed on its platform took an average of 363 days in 2025, unchanged from the year before, while German deals shortened only slightly, from 405 days to 398.
Drooms advised owners who plan to sell to keep their assets ready for a transaction, so that they can act while buyers are active. Its projection of a 50% rise in German transactions rests on the first-half pace continuing through December.
