One of my favourite quotes in this edition of PropertyEU Magazine comes from a spirited keynote address by Ben Hammersley, editor at large, Wired Magazine, at the annual INREV conference in Vienna in mid-April.
Commenting on the unprecedented and rapid advances being made in computer technology, Harmmersley warned that many professional jobs – including those of fund managers – will be taken over by artificial intelligence in the not too distant future. 'We're just meat puppets keeping the seats warm and waiting for the robots to come,' he said.
Another striking vista of the future comes from Kevin Mofid, head of commercial research at Savills in the UK, who talked about how autonomous vehicles will reshape logistics at a recent PropertyEU Investment Briefing. Pointing to a white paper by DHL, Mofid noted how the logistics provider believes there will be convoys of autonomous trucks traipsing through Europe within the lifetime of a 20-year lease for a logistics warehouse. The logistics real estate sector is changing fast, too. Only a couple of years ago, fund managers needed 18 to 24 months to raise a logistics fund. Now that job can be done in just a few months, claims Christopher Garbe of Garbe Logistics.
XXL warehouses
E-commerce has been one of the biggest drivers behind the recent growth – and institutionalisation – of the logistics asset class and the posterboy for the trend towards XXL warehouses has without a doubt been Amazon. Not surprisingly, the online giant – which has been described as being at the ‘bleeding edge’ – is the dominant tenant in
our ranking of the largest logistics schemes completed between 2013 and 2015. The US company has also helped keep Goodman at the helm of our ranking of top logistics developers in Europe for the fifth year running: the Sydney-listed company has now developed over 1 million m2 for the firm.
When it comes to mind-boggling figures, though, China continues to call the shots and there is good reason to believe that the second wave of real estate investors that is now emerging and is targeting Europe will have even greater repercussions than the first. Delegates at our inaugural Investment Briefing in Shanghai in late April learned that we can expect the new arrivals to be even more numerous and broader based. Moreover, they are very keen to form alliances with players on the ground. That is good news for the European real estate specialists who are at the bleeding edge in their respective fields .
Judi Seebus
Editor in Chief
