As the economy is growing and forecasts for 2015 and 2016 are positive, the leasing market has picked up pace in the past 12 months, in turn positively affecting the investment market. The investment market reached a post GFC peak in 2014 when total investments in offices, industrial, retail, hotels and residential reached €9.7bn. As pricing of Dutch property was relatively attractive compared to other European countries, the Dutch market has become one of the key markets for cross-border investors.

Despite the fact that foreign demand remains high and many international investors are keen to invest more in the Netherlands, the overall share of non-domestic investments has dropped significantly in 2015 H1. This has very much to do with the lack of large portfolio transactions so far. The by far largest portfolio transaction in this period concerned Klépierre selling nine shopping centres to the Dutch listed retail investor Wereldhave, for a total volume of €770m, being one-fifth of the total investment volume so far. This makes the retail sector the largest investment sector so far, with around €1.3bn sold, compared to €1.8 bn in 2014 full year.

^{Source: Savills European Research}

New logistics developments, many of them speculative, are plenty and are driven by the strong growth in e-commerce (+18% in Q1 2015). Retailers expanding their logistics networks include bol.com phased 200,000 sq m development) and Primark (80,000 sq m).

Office investments are coming through also, but the number of portfolios sold remains limited. Savills however expects the second half of 2015 to show a far larger activity in this sector as there are around 20 portfolios at / coming to the market (totalling between €2.5bn and €3bn) and added to that a number of large single assets, like the 160,000 sq m De Rotterdam in Rotterdam.

Source: Savills European Research

Residential investments have been plenty in H1 2015, partly due to the second tranche of the Patrizia portfolio coming through, but primarily due to a large number of small assets picked up by domestic institutional investors. Still, the activity at the selling side is limited and it is expected that the final investment volumes will end up significantly lower than the €3bn of 2014.

Current prime gross yields in the office market stand at 5.6%, in the logistics market at 6.6%, for high street retail at 3.9% and shopping centres at 5.6% and in the residential market at 4.9%.