Core-Real Estate Investments in times of crisis: Exemplified by the Frankfurt and London office market

Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 2,0, University of Regensburg (International Real Estate Business School IREBS), course: Immobilienwirtschaft, language: English, abstract: “The basis of optimism is sheer terror.” This drastic quote by Oscar Wilde comes with a ‘core’ of truth. Through the last century’s history of money and financial markets the market players were usually driven by the same factors and financial laws. For once you have to accept more risk if you want higher yields and therefore you have to pay more if you want a higher security of your invested capital. And secondly, capital is shy and driven by fear and only partially rational rather than driven by emotions. No matter which crisis of for example the 20th century is analyzed, usually bubbles were often born slowly but steadily, market mechanisms failed and when too much money was available (often too cheap), prices of certain fields and goods went up drastically, investors became greedy and at the peak everything was bursting and fear was ruling. Afterwards, as for example after the dot.com-bubble, investments into these segments were rare and trust needed to be built up again.The commercial and professional real estate market theoretically is in this regard not different from other markets. A usual behavior in times of crises is the wish for more security, more stable investments, and meaning significantly less volatile and ideally very liquid and realizable investments on a market. Capital Investments should be “safe havens” and rather bring little or less money than losing heavily or all. In the current time of crisis, after the initialized 2008 Lehman Brothers crash and the followingsubprime crises, followed by the global recessions in mostly 2009, some countries 2010 and even today in the days of the European and global sovereign debt crisis real estate investors are as an international phenomenon shifting money into secure real estate andon the professional site into “core commercial real estate” in A-markets.