It seems almost customary these days that the run-up to any annual industry event is dominated by a major economic or political incident.
Things were no different this year for UKREiiF, as Health Secretary Wes Streeting resigned five days before the conference, setting up what many expect to be a tight Labour leadership contest this summer.
But, where UK politics delivered uncertainty, the British weather stayed reliable, serving up intermittent rain for the 16,000 delegates walking around Leeds Dock and the city centre this week.
Nevertheless, a moderately positive mood was palpable around the Royal Armouries Museum, even with many struggling with interrupted Wi-Fi over the three days.
"I'm not sure whether it's mindless enthusiasm or grim determination, but there is a feeling of purpose at UKREiiF", John Knowles, head of Colliers Capital Advisory, tells CoStar News.
"I think there is a desire that says, this world is not going to give me any favours on a macro-level, so I've got to get on with it and address those key issues, whether that is a lack of affordable housing, or other big strategies," he adds.
Knowles, whose team has added numerous members since the start of the year, says many of the conversations he is having at UKREiiF centre around clients asking where they can find capital, with talk of interest rates subdued.
"A lot of people have been saying to us, how do I get some reliable, longer-term capital involved in my project and my business, and how do I grow my business going forward. That's what I'm seeing a lot of on the equity and debt side."
Knowles points out that this extends to local authorities and county councils, who are searching for investment to regenerate towns and cities, especially in a period when funding from central government is slim, and is not coming from the EU.
He suggests where those funding solutions could come from: "You would imagine that those bigger pools, local authority pension funds, must be key drivers of regeneration. If they're not prepared to back regeneration in the areas from which they have pensioners, then you could question whether they should be doing it at all."
Looking ahead to the rest of the year, he says there is "no lack of stock" for the investment market, with many properties, particularly offices and industrial assets, being prepared for sale ahead of the expected return of core buyers. But he says many have been put on ice for now.
"I think the rest of the year could see some quite nice product brought to market in some areas that the market could quite like... but the risk the other way is that the market stalls a bit further and we're having the same conversation in three months' time."
Catriona Buckley, managing director, UK and Ireland client solutions, at CBRE IM, agrees that many at UKREiiF this year are working to find funding solutions for regional regeneration projects.
"The increasing involvement of public finance in the mix of capital can be transformational. I think at UKREiiF you do see a coalition of the willing working to unlock viability for regeneration and investment across the UK, an intersection of locally focused authorities and global investors to find an investible pipeline.
"We are a long-term investor and are here to represent our UK domestic investors and our global clients. A lot of that focus at present is on single family housing."
In addition to domestic political uncertainty, property experts at the Leeds conference say global headwinds, such as the war in the Middle East, have filtered through to investment appetite after a positive end to 2025 had created momentum.
Andrew Meikle, Cushman & Wakefield's national head of capital markets, says: "From the end of the summer last year debt markets were changing, improving rapidly.
"It moved from one to two high street lenders being prepared to back regional offices for instance to eight or nine. They were competing for prime offices. And we saw new entrants beginning to look not just at central London where the liquidity crisis for larger lot sizes was disappearing but at regional offices.
"People were feeling good about the market and that was the same with mid and big-box industrial. Regional offices were looking under-priced and debt accretive and the occupier story has been brilliant."
He adds: "The story remains, but obviously the market has slowed with less transactions since the war in Iran. We are stress testing to see whether the cost of debt has changed and when it may no longer be accretive, but the strategic case for investing remains for now."
In times of macroeconomic uncertainty, Imogen Ebbs, head of UK real estate equity at Aviva Investors, says businesses are looking to form trusting relationships with prospective partners.
Ebbs adds that investors are being more selective about how and where they are choosing to deploy capital, with her own company focused chiefly on residential, urban logistics and prime central London developments, across long-term strategies.
She says its focus on these sectors is driven by good supply-demand dynamics, with housing a "top pick" for the firm, which has been active in single-family housing and high-quality rental accommodation.
After focusing on homes in the South East over the last few years, Ebbs says Aviva Investors is now branching into other areas. "We are value-driven, it won’t happen everywhere, and we are being selective with partners," she says.
Ebbs adds that Aviva Investors is looking to find "similar-minded partners" at UKREiiF, who also want to invest in projects over the long-term, with the group recently speaking to groups from the Middle East, Japan, South Korea and Canada.
She insists that the UK remains a top destination for global investors due to its demographics and supply-demand dynamics, as well as it being one of the quickest countries to reprice after Covid.
"Aviva Investors is in growth mode but we don’t want to do it alone. We’ve been speaking to investors for nine months and have got good traction."
Mark White, real estate partner at law firm Charles Russell Speechlys, says the transactions market has been "fairly flat" in recent months across sectors for "obvious reasons".
He tells CoStar News the company would be using the Leeds event as a barometer to measure activity and sentiment, particularly in relation to companies visiting from abroad. "What is so important here is to get a temperature check of what the opportunities are over the next 12 months," he says.
"As a firm, we focus on international private capital and that has proved to be where the momentum is, and where we expect to see continued growth, particularly with the longer term view that capital can often take.
"What is true is it is a very interesting time to be a real estate lawyer with such major changes for the industry from government as the Renters' Rights Act and the incoming ban on upward-only rent reviews to unpick."
One international developer making a significant investment in the UK is YTL Developments. The Malaysian property group is building up to 7,000 homes at Brabazon in north Bristol, one of the government's New Towns.
But Seb Lyons, planning and development director at YTL, argues that to make a town you need more than homes. This is why the developer is delivering 200,000 square feet of new Grade A offices, a 20,000-seater arena and a separate 2,000 capacity conference centre at Brabazon, alongside retail and leisure space.
"Brabazon's ultimate objective is to create as many destinations and reasons to come to the town as possible to support the ecosystem that our residents will then benefit from, which is the cultural amenities, the food and the beverage and the transport."
Lyons argues that work on the new train station being delivered at the centre of the 450-acre scheme has led to a massive gearchange in the scale of its delivery, with Bristol Brabazon station due to open in the autumn.
He says it will have around six trains an hour to Bristol city centre by the time the arena opens in 2028. "The train station is such a critical component of moving people to central Bristol and back, which has always been one of the major barriers for north Bristol.
"While it thrives economically – it is the sixth most productive area in the country – people haven't had all of the other aspects, in terms of what they do after work. The rail station changes that."
Lyons predicts that Brabazon could be used as a case study for the government at the end of its term to prove how it has delivered regeneration through its New Towns initiative.
"When they come to present the success of New Towns at the next election, they will be able to come to Brabazon and show people development and investment, international investment as well, not just local investment."
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves and Housing and Planning Secretary Steve Reed both made appearances in Leeds this week, with the former spending time in the West Midlands pavilion speaking to the Richard Parker, the region's mayor, and Ed Cox, the recently appointed chief executive of the West Midlands Combined Authority.
Cox spent the conference helping to exhibit some of the region's circa £19 billion worth of investment opportunities, including those in the Birmingham and North Solihull Gateway growth corridor.
It is anchored by by HS2’s Curzon Street and Interchange stations and also includes the Birmingham Sports Quarter, which is being supported by a £2 billion investment from Knighthead Capital, which owns Birmingham City Football Club. The mixed-used Smithfield regeneration site is also included.
Cox argues that the economic power of the West Midlands is hard to ignore, with a circa £130 billion economy and an population of 4.5 million, making it a "huge part" of UK plc. "There is no way to UK growth that doesn't pass through the Midlands," he says.
He explains how the launch of the Birmingham East Mayoral Development Corporation this week, dubbed Britain's largest, will help to accelerate development across the region and deliver certainty to the market.
"Things like the MDC provide certainty in otherwise politically uncertain context. The fact that we are announcing it today, despite the fact that Birmingham City Council haven't worked out what their administration is going to look like, shows that level of confidence and certainty that we can have as a region."
While he suggests the prospect of Andy Burnham becoming Prime Minister would be exciting for mayoral corporations, due to his work in this area, he says the West Midlands Combined Authority is focusing on the powers and funds it already has at its disposal to delivery.
"If there was one thing that could help to shift the dial, it would be fiscal devolution, the ability to potential raise but certainly spend tax that is currently collected by government and then given to us as a grant. Greater ability to pull in tax ourselves and then spend it with freedom, that would be really important."
The Chancellor later confirmed at the conference that she intended to deliver a fiscal devolution roadmap at the next Budget in a speech setting out the government's regeneration priorities.
On the first day of the conference, delegates inside the Bury Theatre heard from another government figure, Housing and Planning Minister Matthew Pennycook, as he kicked off the conference.
With his party facing criticism over frustrations with the planning system and its progress on supporting the delivery of 1.5 million homes by 2029, Pennycook used his address to defend the efforts of his colleagues.
While labelling its housing delivery goal "incredibly stretching", he said the government's "bold and comprehensive plan to build the homes and infrastructure the country needs" was beginning to "bear fruit".
He also insisted the government was "going to stay the course and finish the job", listing changes it had already made, including the revised national planning policy framework, which incorporates the reintroduction of mandatory housing targets and a "modernised greenbelt land designation and release".
He said: "Over recent days I've listened with some amusement to colleagues' claim that we arrived in government underprepared and lacking clarity, vision and direction.
"When it comes to housing and planning nothing could be further from the truth.
"We used every waking moment in opposition to develop and bold and comprehensive plan, one that over the past 22.5 months has allowed us to undertake the most rapid, holistic and radical overhaul of the housing and planning system in decades."
An expert in development planning, Carl Potter, tells CoStar News that the industry is having to find solutions in light of the challenges it continues to face.
The head of development and planning in the Midlands and South for CBRE, adds: "The reality is this has been a difficult and challenging market for a sustained period but in the end, clients overcome challenges and develop a longer-term approach.
"There are a lot of opportunities being introduced at UKREiiF, and we see liquidity in many of the regional markets where a number of exciting projects will be brought to life."
His colleague, Rob Madden, CBRE, head of UK investor leasing, adds that there has been no evidence of bigger deals being aborted in regard to the leasing market, even though they are taking longer to conclude.
"The leasing and occupier markets are still robust while in investment, there is increasingly more caution. We had hoped 2026 would see a return of speculative development in some key markets but now, macro factors make that increasingly unlikely.
Approaching mid-year, for our transactional teams, negative sentiment of a slowdown has not played out in overall transaction levels, but there is more caution looking forward."
Viability, flexibility, ESG and AI are all being spoken about by those working across the UK office market, according to Dominic Pozzoni, head of national offices at Colliers.
Catching up with CoStar News at the firm's Leeds office at Broad Gate on The Headrow, he says one of the more positive developments since Mipim in March is evidence that institutional investors are rediscovering their appetite for regional workspaces.
"I've had a few breakfast events, and investors are asking me what is going on with the regional office market, what they should be looking at. What's turned people's heads? Primarily, I think it is because investors are seeing rental growth in that sector, which comes down to the lack of supply.
"The occupational demand is still there and those occupiers have a very limited supply, Grade A stock is very thin in all those regional cities, maybe the lowest it has ever been... that's going to be the case for the next couple of years."
He adds: "I think investors recognise, if they acquire good-quality, Grade A buildings which have enhanced ESG, are electrified and have good amenities, or at least at buildings where that opportunity is there to be undertaken that will drive the rents up, there is merit in acquiring those schemes on a three-year plan."
Pozzoni adds that "everyone is being asked about AI", with the consultancy and its clients starting to use the technology when evaluating major office moves. He adds it could have a significant impact on property management and other aspects of commercial real estate.
"It's how occupiers are assessing the quantum of space they require. AI can help them look at their data, analyse their data and occupancy data on their existing space, functions of different divisions and space within offices.
"Colliers is working on that, especially with our occupiers services team, what an client's footprint actually is, what it will be in two or three years with growth... You have got to work with clients and technology as it evolves and I think this might evolve at quite a pace."
James Finnis, JLL head of UK leasing advisory, also discusses the possibilities around AI and its increasing use by the real estate industry.
"The team started the year strongly, coming off the back of a good 2025. Whilst there is uncertainty in the market and global headwinds, leasing activity continues.
"The team is advising on great product with great clients and we’re still executing good deal volume, but in places the market is acutely light on supply. The teams are actively leveraging AI – alongside JLL data it's a powerful tool to be more efficient and effective.
"UKREiiF is a brilliant place to talk to clients across the sectors. The JLL pavilion is at the very heart of UKREiiF and acts as a magnet with people dropping in as they pass by."
Steady as she goes
According to industrial and logistics experts attending UKREiiF, warehouse leasing has been one area of the property sector which has continued on a steady course, despite well-documented headwinds.
Segro’s Dan Holford, head of national markets, says the occupier market is "buoyant and resilient", with the agency seeing a healthy uptick in the level of demand since the Budget last autumn.
He adds that certainty is the name of the game. “What everyone is looking for in reality, particularly if you’re a big strategic business, is that certainty, even if it’s not the news you want to hear… once occupiers know the cards they have been dealt, they can then play their hand.”
Amid a potential leadership challenge in the Labour party this summer, Holford says occupiers will be keen to get their heads around any shift in policy to help inform their decision-making.
“We have to be careful about it. None of our occupiers are saying it is impacting their day-to-day at the moment, but it is something else they have on the horizon that they are having to factor into big decisions that they’re making. Moving into huge new facilities, with the capital expenditure and the like that is associated with doing that is a big commitment.”
Looking ahead to the rest of the year, Holford predicts a “decent performance” for the occupier market this year, driven by a number of built-to-suit requirements for “sizeable facilities”, as tenants look to rationalise their supply chains or expand.
“Given the level of demand that there is out in the market and given the relative lack of supply in the market with speculative development at a low… the amount of product coming into the market that occupiers can choose from is relatively limited, but demand is holding up.
“Most of our customers appear to be resilient and they are the sort of businesses that are having to make strategic decisions that goes five or 10 years into the future, so they are having to look beyond some of the uncertainty and the volatility we are seeing in the market at the moment.”
Tim Crighton, who leads the retail logistics team for Cushman & Wakefield in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, agrees that leasing has remained steady, with a number of groups continuing to seek space.
But he says the investment market has felt headwinds more heavily. War in the Middle East has hit investor confidence, Crighton adds, increasing the cost of debt and creating more caution around how people are pricing exit yields.
The industrial expert also points out that the conflict has increased risk around construction price inflation, mainly in regard to steel and diesel pricing for groundworks. Although he says this has not yet made its way through to tender responses, price certainty has been reduced.
"At the moment, we haven’t seen prices move out, but we have equally seen that price certainty come in, and I think that it is inevitable that we will see a bit of movement in, particularly on the groundworks and the civil contracts, where they are very diesel-intensive, because the cost has gone up.”
Despite this Crighton believes the market has become familiar with operating in a state of "permacrisis". He says this has heightened the importance of nuance among industrial investors, who are seeking a strong, clear conviction on assets to help them fulfil their objectives.
"It makes capital more selective and, when you have bids, those bids are more genuine and more considered. There is no shortage of capital and that capital is becoming more specific."
Quality over quantity
Property giant Hammerson has been one of the most active buyers of UK shopping centres by volume in recent times, working on a number of deals to buy out joint venture partners at top malls. This includes a deal to buy the remaining 50% interest in The Oracle shopping centre in Reading from a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, for £104.5 million.
Harry Badham, the real estate investment trust's chief development and asset repositioning officer, says the deals have helped to "cement" its portfolio, following a period of getting its house in order to lower its loan to value and strengthen its balance sheet.
"Buying out of JV partners was both a financial capital allocation, in terms of the return, the yield, but it was also a control and an ownership of your assets points so, if we're going to own an asset, manage an asset, believe in an asset and invest in an asset, we want to own 100% of it."
It has also been behind flagship lettings in the regions, such as Marks & Spencer's opening of a circa 80,000-square-foot store at Cabot Circus, taking the space vacated by House of Fraser in 2024.
Badham says the company has a list of core characteristics it uses to measure cities before deciding to invest into schemes, including catchment size, employment levels, growth and GDP.
He argues that the retail property sector has similar dynamics to the office sector, with brands switching to quality over quantity when it comes to their physical footprints, thanks to the emergence of ecommerce.
"If you are going to be in a store, you want to be in the very best store, and if you are going to be in a store, you want one store in the best location, not 10 stores in 10 locations.
"You can cover something like 85% of the UK population with 40 locations, so if you're a retail owner or investor, you want to make sure that you are in those 40 locations. You have got to be where the customer is."
Tom Whittington, director, commercial research in Savills' Manchester team says he is looking past the "choppy water" of the last years to make sense of today's retail market.
"There's always something to be worried about but actually, if you look at the long-term picture, there is lots to be positive about. So sometimes I think it is about standing back and seeing the changes you are seeing over the course of a year or several years that makes for a more meaningful story."
Although deals may be down across the retail market so far this year, he says there are good reasons for this, and argues investors are back, with institutional investors looking at the best schemes.
This, he explains, is partly because of a "rich and blended" occupational story, helping to improve rents and lower vacancy rates. "Last year we saw 50 more retail brands taking space than we had a year before that."
He also notes that more smaller brands are taking space than ever before, with "hype-retail" – interest generated by social media trends – also helping to attract international brands to retail hubs.
"When you see certain brands specifically being able to grow their estates on the back of those social media trends, you realise it is such a big footfall driver. The important thing is the speed and scalability of using that social media hype."
Speaking about department stores, he says these assets are evolving to provide space for other uses, such as leisure or community healthcare, or being redeveloped into residential. He insists most that are vacant have repositioning strategies in play.
"It is very easy to look at an empty department store and assume it is not going anywhere, but it might well be a development play on it, it is just taking a long to unlock. My finger in the air is that three out of four department stores have got a development play that will be seen through at some point when viability gets resolved."