1. Portugal: French firm acquires planned hotel project
French hotel investment firm Covivio acquired a forthcoming 228-room Meininger-branded hotel planned for an area of Porto, Portugal, that has recently seen a revival in commercial development tied to a nearby transit hub. A Covivio statement said the real estate investment trust is purchasing the property, set to start construction in the current first quarter and open in 2028, for about €31.6 million or $37 million from investment firm Eiffage Immobilier Portugal.
The development is in Porto’s Bonfim neighborhood, which is getting new life in the form of new hotels and a planned shopping-center-to-office conversion. A nearby transit station is being redeveloped to accommodate high-speed trains along with subway and bus services.
2. UK: Office, hotel projects lead construction starts
Office property refurbishments and hotel developments were among categories topping construction project starts across some of the United Kingdom’s largest cities during 2025, according to an annual report from consulting firm Deloitte.
Tracking Belfast, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, the firm’s Regional Crane Surveys showed hotel rooms under construction posted annual growth exceeding 50%, reaching 2,564. High-quality renovations dominated office construction starts at around 2 million square feet, a slight decline from 2024, though office space completions at nearly 1.8 million square feet topped deliveries for each of the prior two years.
3. France: Investment partnership targets European properties
American asset management firm Proprium Capital Partners is teaming with the real estate arm of United Kingdom-based BC Partners in a venture aimed at expanding property investments in France and other European countries.
“For us, future growth and synergies in real estate will be very important at Proprium, which manages €3.3 billion in this sector in Europe,” Stéphane Theuriau, a partner in the firm, told Business Immo. Theuriau cited the investment firms’ complementary structures in terms of geographic and strategic focus, noting Proprium is not currently invested in the French market.
4. Germany: Fortress backs business focused on single-family sale-leasebacks
Berlin-based Gesellschaft für Nachhaltige Immobilienwirtschaft (GNIW), which specializes in sale-and-leaseback deals for single-family homes, has received a €500 million financing commitment from private equity investor Fortress to build a residential real estate portfolio.
Fortress said the first purchases are expected soon, under an agreement calling for GNIW to select investments in economically stable locations with a long-term investment horizon. Under this business model, owners sell their property in full to GNIW for a fixed price and in return receive a lifetime right of residence as tenants.
5. Canada: Economic uncertainty seen as top challenge for real estate investors
Economic uncertainty, exacerbated by the trade war with the United States and a weakening labor market, represents the biggest challenge to Canadian real estate investors this year, according to a study from CBRE.
The real estate services firm said 63% of Canadian respondents to its 2026 North American Investor Intentions Survey ranked the combination of a hard-to-predict economy and softening labor market as their top investment challenge. The combined category also topped the list of concerns among respondents in the United States, with 61% placing it above all other challenges. Overall, 74% percent of commercial real estate investors surveyed “plan to buy more assets in 2026 than they did last year,” CBRE said.
6. US: OpenAI quadruples Seattle space in latest sign of office recovery
One of the largest names in the artificial intelligence slice of the tech industry is getting even bigger, delivering its latest boost to a rebounding office market with a deal to more than quadruple its Seattle-area hub.
OpenAI has finalized a deal to expand in a downtown Bellevue, Washington, office tower by another roughly 223,130 square feet, according to people with knowledge of the agreement. The lease catapults the San Francisco-based ChatGPT maker’s space in the City Center Plaza building to more than 272,000 square feet, signaling that the AI-fueled leasing boom rippling across the country is establishing firmer roots in the Seattle area.
This report was compiled from CoStar’s news publications in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France and Germany.