1. Hong Kong: Hotel performance mixed despite high occupancy
Hong Kong’s hotel performance this year has been decidedly mixed, with year-to-date occupancy posting 4% annual growth while the average daily room rate is down 4%.
Demand is expected to grow slowly in 2025, though there’s still room for occupancy growth, particularly in the area of corporate travel early in the week, according to Jesper Palmqvist, senior director of Asia-Pacific research at STR, a CoStar company. Weekends have been strong in Hong Kong, but Sunday-through-Wednesday traffic is down compared with prior years, and operators are seeking to bring more major events to the region, such as concerts and big conferences, Palmqvist said.
2. UK: Property industry looks for development recovery
Moves to “get Britain building again” were among themes heard during the three-day UKREiiF real estate conference in Leeds, as 16,000 United Kingdom property professionals sought ways to contend with disruptions caused by elevated inflation and uncertainties over trade tariffs and interest rates.
Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner said the government has put in place a number of measures to remove roadblocks to development, including opening brownfield and “greybelt” land for development. “There is definitely more capital and more clients getting support to do things from boards and investment committees,” said Colin Thomasson, head of U.K. investment properties at brokerage CBRE, citing a recent rise in cautious optimism.
3. France: Financing rates stabilize as deals rebound
A stabilizing of prime financing rates is helping fuel an upturn in commercial property transactions that started in the second half of 2024 and continues in the early months of 2025, according to a report from brokerage Savills France.
Savills researchers said finance and investment trends reflect “a greater ability to find a common ground between sellers and buyers.” Prime office capitalization rates in the Paris central business district have remained unchanged for over a year, at up to 4.5% for high-value deals, but Savills France is seeing rates approaching 4% for smaller assets valued under €50 million, or even lower rates when there is a possibility of rental value recovery in the short to medium term.
4. Germany: KPMG plans to relocate Frankfurt operations
Global accounting and consulting firm KPMG plans to downsize and move its Frankfurt branch operations from the complex known as the “Squaire” at Frankfurt International Airport, to be closer to the city’s central business district.
Sources said KPMG has signed leases to relocate to two neighboring office buildings on Opernplatz, where it will occupy around 33,000 square meters in total. That includes 20,000 square meters at Park Tower, which will be extensively renovated before KPMG’s move-in, and 12,800 square meters at the nearby OpernTurm tower. KPMG leases about 46,250 square meters at its current Frankfurt location.
5. Canada: Church redevelopment seen as way to ease housing shortage
Canada’s abundant supply of empty churches has led to a dilemma as towns and cities grappling with housing shortages and rising rents consider the structures too important to demolish but difficult to revive.
Owners and developers of the former All Saints Church in Ottawa, which closed in 2014, are seeking to add a nine-floor residential high-rise to the property after building retail space there earlier. Windmill Developments, with offices in Toronto and Ottawa, is set to build 121 condos to replace an older adjacent building now being used as a sales office.
6. US: ‘Nobody wants to swim with coworkers’: Landlords shed outdated amenities
While downtown U.S. offices are fuller these days, some landlords are not only still racing to install appealing features to help lure and keep tenants, they are also doing away with some perks considered no longer relevant.
Take 510 Madison Ave., a 30-story building in New York. Owner BXP recently filled in a two-lane, 20-yard-long lap pool and turned the area into a conference center and coffee bar. “When we bought the building in 2010, everybody thought [the pool] was really cool,” said Beth Leslie, vice president of construction at BXP. But “it wasn’t great. Nobody wants to swim with their coworkers.”
This report was compiled from CoStar’s news publications in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France and Germany.