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While it is possible that a fall in mortgage rates will trigger a modest increase in the number of rental properties over the next two years, we doubt this will offset the weakness in rental supply over the past decade. Our forecast is for tight supply to …
11th February 2025
Trump’s curveballs have limited sway in oil markets With oil prices back to where they were at the start of the year, the oil market has offered a collective shrug to the geopolitical curveballs thrown its way. Although Canada and Mexico have been granted …
10th February 2025
We expect the euro-zone economy to grow at only a sluggish pace this year, with southern economies outperforming the core. Germany’s election will lead to only a modest loosening of its restrictive “debt brake”. France’s budget deficit will remain very …
The Central London office pipeline looks set to go from feast to famine over the next few years, with a sharp drop in planned completions from 2027. But we doubt new office supply will run dry. Constraints on development are easing and demand for new, …
The overall message from the Bank of England this week was decidedly dovish, raising the risk that interest rates will be cut further and faster than our forecast of a fall from 4.50% to 3.50% by early 2026. But as we unpacked in our reaction to the …
7th February 2025
Hawks fly in CEE, but further rate divergence likely The communications from policymakers following central bank meetings in Poland and Czechia this week struck a hawkish tone. After leaving rates on hold , Poland’s central bank Governor Glapinski focused …
Note: Join us as we discuss how Donald Trump's moves to build out his policy agenda will affect energy, soft commodities, and metals markets in a Drop-in on Thursday 13th February 15:00 GMT/10:00 EST . Register here for the 20-minute online briefing. …
Tariffs on energy suppliers. Tariffs on metals suppliers. A push to end the Ukraine war. A National Energy Emergency. Less than one month in. Donald Trump has roiled commodities markets with a slew of orders in the opening phase of his administration. …
While there is currently a lot of focus on r* at the ECB (which we wrote about earlier today ), the outlook for wage growth may prove to be more important in guiding monetary policy. And the ECB’s wage tracker, released on Wednesday, suggests that wage …
Comparing the ECB’s deposit rate to estimates of its equilibrium level suggests that monetary policy will soon be only slightly restrictive. But there is a huge amount of uncertainty around these estimates. With the economy struggling and underlying price …
Will the federal election outcome bring any clarity to Germany’s existential economic and political questions? Could a new government usher in an era of more aggressive fiscal spending – including on defence – and structural reform? Will Germany's new …
The ECB’s April meeting comes amid falling inflation – but also rising global risks, not least the potential growth shock from Trump’s aggressive tariffs. How will heightened macro uncertainty shape the Governing Council’s decision and communications? …
7th April 2025
Donald Trump has sent shockwaves through European corridors of power with his moves to re-engage with Vladimir Putin, his efforts to end the war in Ukraine, and his threats to withdraw the US as the backstop of the continent’s security. But how much of …
20th February 2025
Will the Fed remain on the sidelines in the face of dovish inflation data? How will the Bank of England react to fresh signs of a stagnating economy? How much further will the ECB go in cutting rates? Our senior economists reviewed the latest monetary …
11th June 2025
Five years on and the pandemic is continuing to impact real estate, influencing how we work, where we live and how we spend. But while some structural shifts are now better understood, there’s widespread uncertainty about how they are likely to develop …
9th May 2025
The shift in sentiment toward Europe – from deep pessimism to renewed optimism – has been striking. Germany’s fiscal pivot, falling inflation and interest rates, and rising real incomes stand in contrast to the White House’s chaotic policy rollout, and …
14th May 2025
This page has been updated with additional analysis since first publication. Housing market continues to shrug off sluggish economy The 0.7% m/m rise in the Halifax house price index in January is at odds with the muted 0.1% m/m increase in the Nationwide …
We expect the Bank of England to cut faster and further than investors expect, pushing Gilt yields down and in turn weighing on the pound. The Bank of England (BoE) cut its Bank Rate by 25bp to 4.5% today, as widely expected. Even so, the tone of the …
6th February 2025
The UK stock market appears to be riding high – the FTSE 100 has hit a record high. But local-currency returns from UK equities have been flattered by a weaker pound. In common-currency terms, UK stocks have performed much less impressively, and we expect …
A slowdown in the adoption of EVs – along with an increasing preference for hybrids – is likely to increase demand for platinum by a bit more than for palladium over the coming years. Accordingly, with the supply backdrop likely to remain constrained for …
A stabilisation in capital values and decline in interest rates have sparked optimism that we may be past the worst of the real estate debt refinancing challenge. That indeed looks to be the case in the UK. However, euro-zone banks are still pulling back …
While cutting interest rates from 4.75% to 4.50% today, which was the third 25 basis point (bps) cut in seven months, the Bank of England showed some signs that it may cut rates faster and further than our forecast of a decline to 3.50% by early 2026. …
Easing cycle resumes, rates on their way to neutral The Czech National Bank (CNB) cut its policy rate by 25bp today, to 3.75%, and we think that further easing lies in store this year. Our forecast for the policy rate to fall to 3.00% by end-2025 would …
For updated and more detail analysis see here . Dovish development adds downside risk to our forecast for Bank Rate to fall to 3.50% While cutting interest rates from 4.75% to 4.50% today, which was the third 25bps cut in seven months, the Bank of …
Retail sales lose momentum in Q4 December’s fall in euro-zone retail sales means that growth over Q4 as a whole slowed substantially. We suspect that spending growth will remain subdued in the coming quarters. The 0.2% m/m decline in euro-zone retail …
Rise in interest rates puts a dampener on construction activity The headline CIPS construction PMI dropped to 48.1 in January, from 53.3 in December, indicating the first contraction in activity since February 2024. The decline in the headline balance …
Despite the recent weak news on activity and the uncertainty around the global outlook due to Trump’s US import tariffs, the stronger news on domestic price pressures means the Bank of England will probably continue to cut interest rates only gradually. …
5th February 2025
This is the first in a series of pieces that revisit our pandemic-era forecasts about the future of global real estate markets and cities and explore how they will evolve in the coming years. This dedicated page highlights key analysis from our earlier …
NBP a long way from resuming its easing cycle The National Bank of Poland (NBP) left its policy rate on hold again today, at 5.75%, and we think that interest rates will remain on hold throughout 2025. That’s a more hawkish forecast than the consensus …
Notwithstanding negative FX returns and a challenging external backdrop brought about by Donald Trump’s agenda, we think Turkish bonds and equities will continue to perform relatively well in 2025, as the continuation of orthodox policymaking in Turkey …
We held an online Drop-In session last week to discuss the outlook for interest rates in major advanced economies as the Fed hit the pause button while the ECB cut again. (See a recording here .) The key message was that the threat of US tariffs and the …
4th February 2025
We expect Germany’s next government to reform the national fiscal rule to allow some tax cuts and increased public investment. But it is likely to make slow progress on structural reforms such as digitalisation and improving the environment for start-ups. …
Overview – Our forecast that mortgage rates will fall further than widely expected suggests that a decent recovery in transactions will allow house prices to rise by around 3.5% this year and by 4.5% next year, which would be a bit more than the …
This weekend’s US trade policy announcements and Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on Europe raise the question of whether there is a bigger risk to the euro-zone than we had thought. This Update recaps on four key points about how the euro-zone economy …
3rd February 2025
January’s inflation data won’t change ECB policymakers’ minds about the likely near-term path for interest rates. The fact that services inflation remained high will mean that they will prefer to loosen policy in small steps. The small increase in …
Central Europe struggling as tariff threat looms The manufacturing PMIs in Central Europe rose slightly last month, but the big picture is that they remained at weak levels. And the threat of US tariffs on the EU poses an additional headwind for the …
Still on course for another large rate cut The sharp jump in the m/m rate of Turkish inflation, to 5.0%, was largely driven by one-off factors. And so long as the February CPI figures come in much softer (as we expect), we still think it’s most likely …
Recovery in mortgage lending will pause in Q2 Demand for mortgage credit jumped in Q1 in response to the drop in mortgage rates over the second half of 2023. But a rise in financial market interest rates this week, due to higher-than-expected inflation in …
1st February 2025
EU policymakers have stepped up their calls for progress towards Capital Markets Union and there will be steps in that direction in the coming years. But we aren’t holding our breath for major change. And even if policymakers do more than we anticipate, …
31st January 2025
Putin’s turn to up the ante We argued last Friday that President Trump’s comments on the war in Ukraine were likely to be met with a cold reception in Russia, dampening hopes of a quick end to the conflict. And an interview given by President Putin this …
An initially dry January for euro-zone watchers ended with a data deluge in the last few days which has underlined that the euro-zone economy is struggling and offers hope that inflation is easing. The most striking releases were Q4 GDP data published …
Metals flows adjust to tariffs & sanctions Industrial metals prices have been buffeted by news of potential trade disruptions this week, as fears of tariffs and sanctions loom large. President Trump has pledged to place additional tariffs on aluminium, …
Economies in Eastern Europe picked up a bit of momentum at the end of 2024, but we don’t think this marks the start of a sustained improvement. Timely indicators of activity have weakened in early 2025, and lacklustre external demand will remain a …
The Chancellor’s plans to “kickstart economic growth”, which she set out in a speech this week, probably won’t lift the economy out of its recent malaise in the coming quarters. But at the margin, the announcement of some policies and initiatives aimed at …
Euro-zone inflation easing in January National and state level inflation data published so far suggest that euro-zone inflation may come in a bit lower than anticipated. (Euro-zone data due on Monday 3 rd February). This would support those on the ECB …
This page has been updated with additional analysis since first publication. Higher mortgage rates starting to weigh on prices, but it won’t last Although the muted 0.1% m/m rise in Nationwide house prices in January was slightly worse than expected …
Even though we forecast the 10-year Treasury yield to end 2025 close to its current level, we anticipate that the 10-year Bund yield will fall over the rest of the year as the ECB, unlike the Fed, cuts policy rates further than currently discounted in the …
30th January 2025
Concerns about the impact of the Budget, coupled with higher interest rates, led to a moderation in commercial property demand according to the Q4 RICS commercial survey. Capital value expectations also declined and a dip in investment enquiries points to …
January’s EC survey points to continued weak GDP growth at best. While it also suggests that there are some upside risks to inflation in the near term, firms’ employment expectations and labour shortages are easing which should help to bring down services …
