Brexit’s Impact On US Real Estate Has Been Minimal At Best

So far, Brexit has not been the boon to the US that investors predicted.

Many economists and analysts initially speculated that: 1) global markets would be shocked—which they were the first two days following the vote but then stabilized—and 2) foreign investors would look to US property for safe investments. But a Trepp report concludes that the UK’s decision to leave the EU has had little bearing on US real estate thus far.

“We gave it a couple of months and looked at the results in September,” Trepp senior director of research Susan Persin (below) tells Bisnow. “We looked at data from our respective companies to determine if all the rumors going around were true and basically determined that the data is not yet showing an impact on US real estate markets though we do think more foreign investments will [eventually] be driven to this country due to the Brexit vote.” 

Trepp, in conjunction with EDR, tracked environmental site assessments and CMBS loan originations between July and August. The firms found that a migration of capital into the US property markets has yet to occur.

Though the UK continues to face economic turmoil due to the decision, the US economy is steady. Unemployment remains below 5%, and job growth is healthy, even with the projected slowdown in payroll gains in August and September, indicating the economy is nearing full employment.

The one place Brexit has factored into the US economy, according to Trepp’s report, is in the Federal Reserve’s decision to postpone interest rate hikes these past few months. In addition to concerns about sluggish inflation and anemic GDP growth, the Fed wanted to anticipate the market’s reaction to Brexit before proceeding with rate hikes.

“It might just be that even after two months it is just too soon to determine. There has been a lot of discussion and worries about this, and it was overblown,” Susan says. “The fact that markets went crazy for two days and normalized actually helped the CMBS market—it made lenders feel better about lending and borrowers feel better about borrowing.”