Ireland's commercial property market, on its knees since 2008, is in full recovery mode now with "a weight" of capital chasing investments here, according to CBRE's latest European figures.
According to Marie Hunt, Head of Research at the firm, there was more investment in Ireland in the first half of 2013 as in the entire year in 2012 "which demonstrates the weight of capital chasing investments in the Irish market".
In Q2 alone, investment activity was up more than 73pc on the same period last year, the figures show.
CBRE reported that Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland (the European economies most affected by the euro area crisis) had started to show a recovery in property investment activity - albeit from a low base.
That recovery seems to have continued in Q2 2013, with those four markets reporting a combined total of E2.5 billion of investment activity, up from less than €1 billion in Q2 2012.
The European commercial real estate investment market saw the third successive quarter of strong activity in Q2 2013 with total transactions of €31.1 billion - an increase of 13pc on the same quarter last year, according to the latest data from CBRE.
Germany continues to be one of the strongest investment markets in Europe, benefitting from both strong demand from domestic investors and growing interest from around the world. In aggregate, in the last four quarters, Germany has seen €28.4 billion of commercial real estate investment, an increase of 36pc on the previous twelve months.
Sweden and Norway also made significant contributions to the growth in quarterly investment activity. Both countries have seen strong investment activity for several quarters now.
Property investment was at moderate levels relative to Q2 2012 in both the UK and France. In the case of the UK, the fall in activity was only 6.5pc. In recent years, property investment in France has been strongly weighted to the second half of the year and therefore it will be interesting to see whether that pattern is repeated in 2013.
