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Early-evening view over central Munich from the Alter Peter tower: the twin domed towers of the Frauenkirche and the Gothic spire of the New Town Hall above the old-town roofs.
RealTimes

CAPITAL, CLEARING PRICE AND ACTION

What can actually get done in Munich?

EXPO REAL opens with lenders keen but choosy, prices still under negotiation and projects waiting on terms, power and policy. This is the field guide to which of those can move in Munich.

RealTimes desk · 6 min read

Photo: Andrew Parlette, CC BY 2.0

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  1. Read firstYou are here
    What can actually get done in Munich?

    EXPO REAL opens with lenders keen but choosy, prices still under negotiation and projects waiting on terms, power and policy. This is the field guide to which of those can move in Munich.

    Why these?

    The spine of the Dive: capital, clearing price and action, in one read.

  2. Then
    The room can clear a price without closing a deal

    Munich may help buyers, sellers and lenders test a number. That does not mean the market has finished repairing its balance sheet.

    Why these?

    Where Munich tests a number, and why a number is not yet a deal.

  3. Then
    The new asset is not always a building

    At EXPO REAL, the investable question is increasingly about power, networks and the land that makes them possible. The constraint may be a grid connection, not a planning consent.

    Why these?

    Why the constraint this year may be a grid connection, not a permit.

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Draft post📍 258 public sessions and more than 650 speakers do not, on their own, show that a deal gets signed in Munich.

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2 expert calls in this piece:

Office or Logistics Fund Partner, EuropeHead of Office Lending, Europe

TL;DR

  • Munich opens with 258 public sessions, more than 200 of them panels, and over 650 speakers, but the useful question is not how big the fair is. It is which of three tests, capital, clearing price and action, can move this week.
  • Lenders say they want to write more business (72% of 134 surveyed plan to raise 2026 origination), German investment rose to about €17.6bn in H1, and the new InfrastructureNow forum puts power and grid access on the main programme for the first time.
  • None of that proves a deal gets signed in a hall. It proves the three tests are live: whether capital has terms that close, whether a bid and an ask can meet, and whether a project can start.

A fund manager walking into Hall B3 on Monday morning for the opening investor panel is not there to find out whether European real estate feels better than it did a year ago. It does, a little, and everyone in the room already knows it. She is there to find out whether that feeling converts into something she can act on: a loan she can actually draw, a price a seller will actually accept, a project that can actually break ground. EXPO REAL 2026 gives her three days, 258 public sessions (more than 200 of them panels) and over 650 speakers across 11 forums and stages to test that. Most of what happens in Munich will not answer the question directly. The value of the fair is in the number of chances it gives her to ask it.

Three tests decide what gets done in Munich, and a session can pass one while failing the other two.

Flags outside the west entrance of Messe München during EXPO REAL 2025, with the glass entrance hall and a few visitors walking past.
© Messe München

Capital. Is money available on terms that close, not just terms that lenders say they are open to discuss?

Clearing price. Are a buyer and a seller converging on a number, not merely a market that has been declared recovered?

Action. Can a real project, an office refurbishment, a logistics shed, a data hall, move through permits, power connections and financing at the same time?

Signpost at the north entrance of the Messe München exhibition grounds, reading Eingang Nord, Entrance North, against a cloudy sky.
Photo: Oroborvs, CC BY-SA 4.0

A session, a stand or a headline can satisfy one of these tests and say nothing about the other two.

Start with capital, because it sets the boundary on the other two. CBRE's survey of 134 European lenders found 72% planning to increase 2026 origination, covering roughly €70bn of expected volume. That is real appetite, and it is not unconditional: 66% of the same lenders said they would not lend against an asset that fails sustainability criteria without an improvement plan. Much of the newer non-bank capital sits in closed-end debt funds with their own end dates, a second maturity calendar sitting behind the borrowers' own, and CBRE's midyear outlook finds the all-in cost of debt rose in the first half even as competition between lenders kept margins tight. The ECB raised rates by 25 bp at its 10 Sep meeting, effective 16 Sep: deposit rate 2.50%, main refinancing rate 2.65%, and a net 7% of euro-area banks were still tightening credit standards for enterprise loans in the second quarter. Lenders want more business and are pricing more carefully at the same time. That tension is the debt route through Munich, and The lender is also on a clock follows it.

Clearing price is the harder test, because a fair cannot manufacture a transaction. German H1 2026 investment rose to about €17.6bn, 15% above the same period last year, while Big 7 office vacancy also rose, to 8.5%. Those two figures describe a market where more money is moving and more space is empty at the same time, which is exactly what price discovery in a repriced market looks like: sellers with lower expectations, buyers with more choice, neither side fully settled. The public record does not show a single named transaction that was signed inside the fair in 2024 or 2025. That gap between a converging conversation and a signed deal is the subject of The room can clear a price without closing a deal, the counterpoint to this piece.

Action is the newest test on the programme, and the organiser has given it its own room. InfrastructureNow, a dedicated forum for investable infrastructure, energy networks, digital and social infrastructure, is new to the 2026 conference programme. Its premise is that the constraint on the next wave of European property investment is increasingly a grid connection or a permit, not a lack of capital. European data-centre capacity is forecast to reach 13 GW by year-end 2026, a 20% rise on 2025, while ENTSO-E expects European data-centre electricity demand to grow more than 50% between 2025 and 2030, with access-to-power queues in constrained areas running from years to more than a decade. A site with permission and no power is not a deliverable asset. The new asset is not always a building sets out what that means for an investor used to thinking about planning consent as the main gate.

The host market carries all three tests at once, which is why Germany gets its own route through this Dive. Munich prime office rent rose 5% over 12 months to €62 per sqm per month, even as national vacancy climbed, and the German cities are not moving together: Hamburg investment rose nearly 60% year on year while Frankfurt fell a further 20%. Germany is reopening by postcode, not by headline takes the national headline apart by city. CEE arrives with a different version of the same problem: Warsaw, Prague and Bucharest each set their own price, and 55.0% of the region's first-half 2026 investment came from Central European buyers rather than the international capital the stands are built to attract, though that share is down from 64.8% a year earlier. That thread runs through Poland arrives city by city, Czechia and Slovakia: whose money sets the price? and Romania's yield premium: a reward for moving first or a warning?.

None of this settles the question in advance. It gives a reader walking into Munich three tests to run against every session, every stand conversation and every headline the fair produces this week, and a route to the rooms most likely to produce an answer.

What to test in Munich

  • In any financing session, ask for the specific loan-to-value, margin and asset type a lender will write this week, not a general statement of appetite.
  • In any investment or pricing session, ask whether a named asset moved from guidance to a bid, or whether the number under discussion is still one side's opening position.
  • In any InfrastructureNow or data-centre session, ask for the connection status and energisation date behind the capacity figure being presented, not just the demand forecast.
Sources

Expert call · Office or Logistics Fund Partner · Europe

Office or Logistics Fund Partner, Europe

The Dive's opening piece argues that only a named asset moving from guidance to a signed bid settles the clearing-price question, not a general belief that a market has turned.

  1. What entry yield would your fund bid this week for a stabilised office or logistics asset?
  2. How much has that yield changed since EXPO REAL 2025?
Answer this piece

Answer in two lines, sent to Dominica@RealTimes.co. Unattributed unless you say otherwise.

Expert call · Head of Office Lending · Europe

Head of Office Lending, Europe

72% of 134 lenders surveyed plan to raise 2026 origination, but 66% will not lend against an asset that fails a sustainability screen without an improvement plan.

  1. What LTV and margin would your team offer today on a €50m, five-year loan for a stabilised EPC-A Munich office?
  2. What changes if the office is EPC-D and has no capex plan?
Answer this piece

Answer in two lines, sent to Dominica@RealTimes.co. Unattributed unless you say otherwise.

Next up

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THE ARGUMENT

The room can clear a price without closing a deal

Munich may help buyers, sellers and lenders test a number. That does not mean the market has finished repairing its balance sheet.
Plan this topic: English-language day →

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Read next by role

Lender

Start with the terms driving 2026 origination, then test them against a live deal and against the host market's own split financing picture.

Fund manager

Follow the clearing-price question from the fair floor into the two CEE markets where the entry-versus-exit read matters most this quarter.

Developer

Power and grid access are now a delivery question before planning is, and Germany and Poland show what that means postcode by postcode.

Advisor or broker

Three tests for every meeting: is capital there on terms that close, are buyer and seller converging, and can a project move on power, permits and finance.

City or regional delegation

See how Poland, Czechia and Romania each stage themselves in Munich, and test the same entry-versus-exit question against your own city's pitch.

More from the Dive

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DEBT

The lender is also on a clock

Debt funds are expanding the market, but their own capital has a maturity calendar. A crowded lender market does not automatically mean easier terms.

Frankfurt's banking-district towers above the River Main, seen from the Holbeinsteg footbridge on an overcast day.Photo: Michielverbeek, CC BY 4.0
GERMANY

Germany is reopening by postcode, not by headline

Investment, vacancy and rent are telling different stories in Munich, Hamburg, Berlin and Frankfurt. The host market is not one trade.

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