The bulk of delegates (95%) also reckoned that residential property in a number of European countries were now a suitable asset for institutional investment.

Speakers at the briefing emphasised that based on performance track record alone, residential’s place in investors’ hearts should be assured. Opening the meeting, Malcolm Hunt, Head of UK Client Management at IPD, noted that European residential property covered by IPD had returned 4.6% pa through the 2007-09 downturn, significantly outstripping all property’s 1.1%.

This pattern of outperformance had been confirmed both in 2009 and over the 2000s as a whole. Capital growth had proved to be more stable than for commercial property; however income return was consistently below average, in part due to the high level of operating costs hitting investors, a feature that was highlighted through the meeting as one of the key stumbling blocks for the sector.

Dirk Brounen, Professor of Real Estate Finance at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, stressed the importance that sustainability is likely to have for future residential performance. Referring to his own recent research based on 194,000 Dutch residential sales transactions, he quoted a 2.5% price premium for greener houses based on Epc energy use ratings, and noted that this was borne out by patterns of energy use seen for properties in the various rating bands. "Sustainability, together with the effects of ageing populations, will be a key factor determining residential returns over the next 10-20 years," he said.

Tobias Just, Head of Sector and Real Estate Research at Deutsche Bank, who spoke specifically about the impact of demographics, also noted that ageing populations would change the relative demand levels for different property sectors on the margins of the residential sector, in the most extreme instance "increasing the requirement for nursing home accommodation across Europe two or three-fold between 2010 and 2050."

In a wide-ranging presentation based on his new book, Just asserted that regional trends in population growth were likely to hold the biggest lessons for investors. But he also emphasised that regional population forecasts, like economic forecasts, were susceptible to error, with migration patterns being particularly difficult to predict.

The importance of regional analysis within national markets also formed the backbone of Voas Broun’s thesis. Presenting a report on residential prospects ten years hence just published by the briefing sponsor, Bouwfonds Asset Management, Brouns sought to differentiate demand factors for 971 European regions based on regional clustering, household growth, numbers of households, population density, ageing, GDP growth and employment growth.

On this basis he identified the "European banana", a region stretching from London to Barcelona, as holding the most secure prospects for residential investors. And referring to current market conditions, he suggested that the level of interest amongst institutional investors "is now stronger than two years ago, to some extent because people are more focussed on risk and less on the absolute level of return than before. But the low level of income from the sector remains an issue."