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Hardly anyone is likely to deny that the real estate market continues to face challenges in price discovery. It is interesting, however, that the current semi-annual reports of the major brokerage houses show the first differences in classification.
JLL and CBRE have published their half-year analyses of the German real estate investment market in recent days. Both are observing a noticeable revival of market activity. JLL puts the transaction volume in the first half of 2026 at around 17.6 billion euros (+15%), CBRE at 16.2 billion euros (+13%). In each case, the German real estate investment market is considered with a classification according to asset classes, investor structure and regional focuses. Both banks also agree that the recovery so far has been driven primarily by high-quality individual transactions and liquid core markets.
The headlines sound clearer than the market actually is at the moment: The market is coming back. Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. A higher transaction volume does not per se mean that the market has agreed on a new price level. For the time being, it only means that – relatively – more buyers and sellers will find each other again than a year ago. After all, you can say. The market is becoming broader – not necessarily more uniform. Some price negotiations lead to a conclusion today, others continue to fail due to different price expectations. This explains why an increasing transaction volume and a still very selective market do not have to be a contradiction.
It is therefore relevant to investigate the question of why more transactions are successful today than a year ago, despite still divergent price expectations.
One possible explanation is that it is not the uncertainty that has disappeared – but that waiting has simply become more expensive: refinancing is expiring. Equity also finds attractive investment opportunities outside of real estate. However, many institutional investors are subject to strategic real estate quotas. The fact that institutional investors are once again fulfilling their real estate quotas to a greater extent has recently also been observed in larger-volume bidding processes, in which they have again appeared more frequently alongside opportunistically oriented investors.
Attention should therefore be paid not only to the absolute size of the transaction volume alone, but also to a possible change in market behaviour.
JLL points out that the gap between the asking prices and the price expectations of buyers has not narrowed further recently. CBRE, on the other hand, sees price discovery already well advanced, but also emphasizes that market activity continues to be concentrated on selected properties and liquid core markets. Both observations complement each other and, taken as a whole, describe a market that is finding its way back to functioning – but not yet in its full breadth. One possible interpretation is therefore that it is not because the market can answer all price questions today that more trading is taking place again. But because the costs of inaction have now become higher for more and more market participants.
The rising transaction figures do not seem to indicate that the real estate market has already found a new equilibrium price. They can also be an expression of a market in which more buyers and sellers are finding each other again – although many others continue to have different price expectations. If you want to interpret current developments optimistically, you might see an observation that has often been made before turning points of a cycle in the past:
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