Growth in the eurozone economy remains firm and continues to benefit from healthy domestic demand, particularly private consumption and strong exports. Investment is likely to continue its gradual recovery, mainly as a result of improving credit conditions, which are fuelled by the ECB’s ultra-loose monetary policy. Nonetheless, the Greek debt crisis is casting a shadow on the economy and it remains to be seen whether this will have implications on regional growth in the second half of the year.

GDP is forecast to grow in nearly all European countries. Oxford Economics expects the European union to expand by 1.6% this year and 1.9% in 2016. The strongest outturns are forecast for Ireland (4.5%)Poland (3.8%), Spain (3%), the UK (2.6%) and Sweden (2.4%). Germany (2%) is forecast to grow marginally above the European reunion. All other countries covered in the report are forecast to lag behind while Norway (1.1%), Austria (0.6%), Italy (0.5%), Finland (0%) and Greece (-0.1%) will lag by a greater margin.

So far this year the property market activity and pricing have proven resilient to the uncertainty caused by the Greek crisis. Investor appetite is expected to remain high in H2. There is potential for increasing investment volumes in the context of fairly-low interest rates, availability of finance, and improving economy. Owners are taking advantage of the favourable market conditions of high demand and rising prices, and bring more portfolios on the market.

The main uncertainties hanging over the future of the market are the future development of the American and Chinese economies and the risk of a Grexit that would affect investor confidence and potentially shift once again their focus to core markets such as Germany and France and strong non-Euro markets such as the UK.

We have revised upwards our prediction for 2015 and we forecast an increase of at least 10% yoy of the commercial investment activity, to reach about €120bn in our survey area. We expect prime yields to continue to harden in almost 60% of our markets and to remain stable in the rest.