On 22 January 2019 Dentons held its annual Real Estate Market Predictions event. During the course of the evening a panel of industry leaders, assisted by an animated audience, discussed the challenges and opportunities facing the real estate market in the year ahead. Distilling those views and combining them with our own experience from the transactional real estate market we have identified three key trends to watch in 2019 which are summarised in our real estate market predictions summation video and accompanying Predictions 2019 report.

Looking back at 2018, it was the year that Blockchain boomed, many companies found themselves unprepared as GDPR came into force and we said goodbye to Toys “R” Us in one of the year’s many retail collapses. The UK’s divorce settlement with the EU stumbled on, President Trump continued to cause regular Twitter storms while starting the longest ever recorded shut down of the US government.

As we progress through Q1 of 2019, the real estate market continues to be preoccupied with Brexit, but there are plenty of other disrupters at play. Online competition, business, rates, poor consumer confidence and changing occupier demands are re-shaping the market. Add to this the increasing emphasis on property as a service rather than a product and the rebalancing of power between landlords and tenants and you can forgive a little anxiety as to where the market is heading.

So will the mantra of 2019 be that fortune favours the brave? Possibly, though it is more likely that fortune will favour the well-informed. Read our Predictions 2019 report and view our video to hear the trends that are likely to shape 2019 and to understand why the key to success is in acknowledging it's not just the place, it's the people too.