Tony Horrell, JLL's head of European Capital Markets division,tells GlobeSt.com following the conference that he expects unstablemarket conditions to remain during 2008, and that investmenttransaction volumes across Europe will be down 25% from 2007."We've been rocked, we could be in better shape," he admits. "Butit's just a different ballgame now, of what to buy and where tobuy. It's pretty obvious that Europe is slightly polarized, somemarkets have accepted that pricing has changed, and others arepartly in denial. The UK has accepted it and re-priced itself, butin general the continent has not."

He says in the next 18 months, the markets will re-price, andinvestors will just have to resign themselves to getting theirhands dirty in hard research about what to buy. The good news, hesays, is that he expects volumes to fall just to 2005 levels. "In2005, we all thought such levels of activity were reasons for greatoptimism," he says. "It's just that at the beginning of 2005, therewas a five-to-one ratio of capital to assets, where now its arounda two-to-one ratio."

During the conference, various officials reported on thedifferent major city markets. Julian Stocks, head of capitalmarkets in England, said that the UK has become a value market. "Wethink that there will be an overcorrection in the London officesector, which will result in a very good buying opportunity for ashort period of time," Stocks said.