Logistics/industrial.

The logistics market has innate strengths that will help it to avoid the worst of the downturn - and some places, such as eastern Europe, offer profitable opportunities even now

Often seen as the least glamorous property class, warehouses, helped by steady demand and less volatile rental cycles could weather the economic storm. Industrial investment volumes across Europe have halved since last year, according to figures from Real Capital Analytics 2008. From January to April 2007, investment in the European industrial market was 8.66bn compared to 4.29bn over the same period in 2008. But there has only been a small outward yield movement compared to the office and retail markets"The market tends not to rise to the peaks or fall to the troughs of other asset classes." says Paul Danks, Atisreal's European logistics co-ordinator. "It can take years to build an office or shopping centre, but it is much quicker to build a warehouse. Of course, those in the sector are not immune, but they are able to react faster."Although yields are rising across Europe with the average prime yield at 6.7%, according to Savills, many in the industry see this is a return to normal. With less debt available, big portfolio buyers have disappeared and many investors are pulling out of deals at the last minute."Last year, lots of money was available and there wasn't enough product to buy," says Guy Frampton, executive director for CBRE industrial and logistics Europe. "But post credit crunch, the challenge isn't what you can sell but what can you sell it at. It isn't real doom and gloom. You have to work hard but you can still do the deal."Even though occupier demand for space is strong, particularly in the CEE countries and the emerging markets of Russia, Turkey and Ukraine, a lack of finance for new development ...