Knight Frank sees boom in Europe’s private rental property market

As the amount of global capital looking for a home grows ever larger, the changing real estate landscape presents new opportunities and challenges.

For example, property investors can expect to see a seismic shift in Europe’s residential market towards growth in the private rental sector, according to Alistair Elliott, senior partner and group chairman of real estate consultancy Knight Frank.

And changes in consumer behaviour mean that as online shopping increasingly becomes the norm, there is likely to be an explosion in demand for logistics and distribution hubs, says Elliott, who

took up the position in April 2013, and has been involved in a wide range of projects throughout the south east of England.

How has the UK market been reacting to all the political uncertainties in recent months?

In the last year or two, after several years of very aggressive growth in the housing market, things have settled down a bit. In the lead-up to Brexit, particularly, there was some hesitation in the market. And then we had the prospective election in North America. Actually the market reacted to those things surprisingly positively. So last year was a year of hesitancy but as we got to the end of last year and beginning of this year, the local market and the international market began to show some sign of resilience and recovery.