Review Quo Vadis 2023

Writ­ten by Antho­ny Baum­ruk, Partner.

Real estate, invest­ments, ideas: Last week, the 33rd annu­al kick-off for deci­sion-makers in the real estate indus­try, the “Quo Vadis”, took place in Berlin.

The motto this year was: “Invest­ing out of the crisis!” In my view, this is an essen­tial event that brings togeth­er many deci­sion-makers and provides fact-based food for thought for the coming months.

The central topic in 2023 will certain­ly be the econom­ic devel­op­ment in Germany and the “dislo­ca­tion” on the markets. Real estate prices will fall, inter­est rates will contin­ue to rise and subsidy programmes of the past years have not shown the desired results. For many compa­nies, includ­ing the construc­tion indus­try, these changes reflect enor­mous chal­lenges. At the same time, there is still an enor­mous short­age of skilled person­nel. Never­the­less, there was an over­all posi­tive outlook in many of the conver­sa­tions I had. Compa­nies defi­nite­ly see a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for devel­op­ment in the current year based on the changed market envi­ron­ment. More than ever, it is up to the deci­sion-makers in manage­ment posi­tions to recog­nise these oppor­tu­ni­ties. There were many differ­ent points of view on this — in the course of the year we will see who is right.

Many thanks to the top-class contri­bu­tions on the three days of the event. A special thank you goes to Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Lars P. Feld for his astute and humor­ous assess­ment of the markets and the real­is­tic reflec­tion of the status quo of the German admin­is­tra­tion. A “cross-asset” investor manage­ment will occu­py many asset managers in the coming years and here Henning Koch’s (Chair­man / CEO at Commerz Real AG) commen­tary was both very inter­est­ing and insightful.

In short, a truly great event  and it was a plea­sure to exchange ideas with the other partic­i­pants in person, to see new and famil­iar faces. My heart­felt thank, also, to the organ­is­ers of Heuer Dialog for host­ing the event and to Gitta Rometsch, Franziska Heuer (both Heuer Dialog) and Timo Tschamm­ler (MOUNT Real Estate Capi­tal Part­ner) for the enter­tain­ing presen­ta­tion and moder­a­tion through­out the three days,  See you again next year at Quo Vadis!

(Image — copy­right of Heuer Dialog)