The PERE Podcast

This episode is sponsored by LaSalle and Nuveen Real Estate

Liquidity is returning to European real estate credit markets. Growing confidence that interest rates have stabilized and prices have reset is encouraging debt investors to provide a steady flow of capital to sponsors. And that is helping to kickstart transaction activity.

European banks are back with an appetite for new business. That means competition between lenders is heating up, especially to provide low-risk senior finance. Fewer lenders are stepping forward to finance more complex situations, though, creating an opening for debt funds as the market regains momentum.

In this special episode, Isabelle Brennan, senior managing director at LaSalle, and Christian Janssen, head of real estate debt for Europe at Nuveen Real Estate, pinpoint the lending opportunities available to private credit providers as the market enters a new cycle.

The conditions are finally in place to generate an increase in borrowing for new transactions, not just refinancings, Brennan suggests. Meanwhile, lower pricing for loan-on-loan finance has seen an increase in the use of back leverage, which is helping debt funds generate attractive equity-like returns. Macroeconomic uncertainty caused the market to stall briefly in 2025, but the year ended with a surge of activity, says Janssen, and that has continued into 2026.

PERE podcast host Lucy Scott sits down with Real Estate Capital Europe's editor Daniel Cunningham and PERE EMEA editor Charlotte D’Souza to catch-up on the insights from this year’s MIPIM conference in Cannes.

Join the team as they discuss how the US and Israel war on Iran – which was into its 11th day as delegates arrived for the annual event – was affecting sentiment and hear their thoughts on whether market participants see the crisis as likely to derail real estate’s recovery.

Daniel and Charlotte also provide their feedback on capital flows, gathered from dozens of meetings held with senior managers and lenders over the course of the week. Find out why investors are seeking to commit to commingled funds, showing preference for club deals, joint ventures and separate accounts, and how, on the debt side, lenders are faring as they continue to compete for deals.

This episode is sponsored by Deutsche Pfandbriefbank

In recent years, alternative lenders have satisfied an increasing proportion of the European property market’s financing needs. But banks still account for the lion’s share of activity. In this episode of The PERE Podcast, Duncan Pearson and Charles Balch, managing directors at Deutsche Pfandbriefbank (pbb), explore the new avenues for cooperation between the different classes of lender.

They argue that today, both banks and debt funds are established as essential and complementary elements of the lending ecosystem, with the relationship between them evolving beyond simple rivalry.

Pearson explains the rationale behind pbb’s Originate and Cooperate program, which promotes collaboration between the bank and alternative finance providers. He suggests that the initiative will lead to more sustainable capital structures and lower financing costs for borrower clients, while enabling the bank and its partner lenders to access a wider range of business opportunities.

The lending environment has changed, notes Balch, so banks need to position their balance sheets to meet the needs of the new cycle, serving a wide range of borrowers, who in turn are seeking to make real estate assets fit to meet the rapidly evolving requirements of today’s end users.

The pair conclude that while 2026 is unlikely to be a “soaraway” year, and financing remains expensive for transitional projects, liquidity is beginning to return to European real estate markets, bringing with it improved prospects for transaction activity.

This week, we bring you extracts from an interview with François Trausch, PIMCO Prime Real Estate's chief executive and chief investment officer.

At the start of 2026, PIMCO Prime Real Estate identified real estate debt markets as one of the most compelling themes for the year, based on the view that as liquidity returns to the market, debt strategies present originators with opportunities that offer a combination of relatively low risk and attractive returns.

In the paper, the company, which has a real estate debt book of €23 billion, forecasted that transaction activity will rise in 2026 – and with it, acquisition financing. It says that while the “wall of maturities” continues to shape the market backdrop, narrowing bid-ask spreads are beginning to unlock dealflow across major asset classes. If this unfolds further, it will mark a significant shift for lenders after several years in which refinancing activity has dominated the landscape.

Listen here as Trausch unpacks these ideas during an interview with Real Estate Capital Europe's editor Daniel Cunningham and explains what returning liquidity means for property credit managers, where opportunities are expanding for non-bank lenders, and how they can position themselves to capitalize. He also shares his longer-term outlook for real estate debt. An article based on this interview can be read in full in the Spring issue of REC Europe.

This week on The PERE Podcast, focus is turned to Singapore, where a lively docket of PERE Asia keynotes and panels have just concluded. The event saw record attendance across its three days, with some 600 delegates in attendance across the event including institutional investors, managers and advisers. 

PERE has been active in tracking perspectives from leading institutions and firms onsite, including analysis on how Adu Dhabi Investment Authority and Australian Retirement Trust are navigating fund investment activity in 2026.

For this episode, PERE editor Evelyn Lee’s keynote interview with Starwood Capital Group president Jonathan Pollack takes center stage. Pollack is a primary driver of the manager’s overarching strategy and daily business operations, and as PERE reported in a September 2025 cover story, he is also the chosen successor to Starwood founder and chief executive officer Barry Sternlicht. 

Pollack covers a broad range of topics, all spanning from his first year in as the operational overseer for Starwood. The firm is angling to work more closely with insurance capital partners; continue clean-up and related asset management work linked to Starwood’s $7 billion take-private of ESR Group in 2025; and take a more cloud computing-centric tack to its data center investment pipeline. All this is under the backdrop of global geopolitical issues, which are expected to force financial market participants to recalibrate for US policy as military escalations take place in Iran and select neighboring countries.