Property
The largest players on the European real estate market
Anglo-Saxon hegemony.
The dominance of Anglo-Saxon real estate brokers is impossible to miss on PropertyEU's Top10 ranking. The only exception there is German-French combine AtisReal. Apart from this company, all other real estate brokers are headquartered either in London or New York.
Cushman & Wakefield came in fourth, followed by UK top player Savills, which has recently entered Hungary. Colliers is the sixth biggest real estate broker in Europe.
While JLL is a very close runner-up in terms of investment volume behind CBRE, the number of its agents employed is substantially lower at 2,900.
While CBRE was unable to provide investment volume information exclusively for Europe (the figures refer to activities in EMEA), PropertyEU assumes that the bulk of the firm's investment volume is in fact generated in Europe (UK included).
While most of the top 10-players have expansion plans, there is general consensus that only a select number of companies will dominate.
“We see an ongoing polarisation in the industry between the major global property consultant and the niche players," PropertyEU cited Paul Bacon, CEO EMEA of Cushman & Wakefield as saying.
The globalisation of property markets is already a reality, he added. “[...] last year half of all transactions in Europe were cross-border," he said, adding that those firms capable of making these global connections will continue to be the winners.
According to Alistair Hughes, European head of Jones Lang LaSalle, large corporate clients want one-stop global firms to deal with their property requirements. Richard Fiddes, managing partner for Europe at King Sturge noted that clients are becoming increasingly aware of potential conflicts of interest if too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few very large global consultants. “This means there will be a continuing demand for advice from boutique or other niche firms in specific sectors," he said.
