Property titans seek clues in Cannes for a turnaround in real estate market

Cannes MIPIM conference discusses global real estate industry's struggle amid biggest crash in over a decade.

The global real estate industry is scrabbling around for reasons to be optimistic in the grip of its biggest crash in more than a decade, with developers and investors talking up the prospect of a recovery — just not quite yet.

Held this week in Cannes on the French Riviera, the MIPIM property conference unfolds against a backdrop of falling commercial real estate (CRE) prices and developers wondering what to do with offices emptied out by the pandemic.

As an expected 20,000 investors, developers and agents began arriving, delegates gathered around miniature models of planned developments and met clients on company-commandeered yachts. Many were busy discussing the market fallout, others trying to strike deals.

Several of the largest real estate investors, including U.S. giants LaSalle, Greystar, Hines and Federated Hermes, France’s AEW and Germany’s Patrizia, told Reuters they saw tentative signs of deal activity rebounding.

But some also struck a note of caution.

“There’s a lot of hot air being pushed through the Croisette,” Philip La Pierre, head of Europe at LaSalle Investment Management, said at the conference, referring to Cannes’ beachside thoroughfare thronged with estate agents. “So you’ve got to navigate that quite carefully.”

A punishing rise in borrowing costs and empty offices have combined to sour many property investments, although sectors such as data centres and logistics have held up much better.