Raj Kotecha shares his views with Real Asset Insight’s CEO Survey

Amro Chairman and CEO Raj Kotecha described 2023 as the “second reset year” for real estate markets globally, with the first half characterised by adjustment to a new and sustained period of higher borrowing costs, and the second half by declining inflation and a plateauing interest rate environment.

Discussing the main challenges facing our sector in 2024, Raj believes a key challenge will be when the central bank interest rate reduction cycle commences, in particular when the US Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and the Bank of England make their first rate reductions.

“All these central banks were heavily criticised for being late on the upwards rate cycle, and there could be a tendency for them to overcompensate by being late in commencing the downward cycle, in order to restore their credibility,” he said.

With land prices remaining soft, construction prices now declining and investment yields expected to stabilise as interest rates fall, Raj is confident that 2024 will be a strong vintage for new development activity.

Amro’s focus will be “on consolidating our presence in the new markets of Germany and the Netherlands, which we entered in 2023, and to further scale up activity in our more established markets of the UK and Iberia. We are also making significant investment in our in-house data analytics and AI capabilities via Amro Data Labs.”

Read the full interview here.