"The real estate investment market is clearly surging," says King Sturge MD Sascha Hettrich. "While the foregoing months were defined by a process of probing the diverging price targets of buyers and sellers, we now seem to see a rapprochement in face of stabilizing top yields. Higher transaction volumes suggest that the gap is narrowing and that we might expect another increase in turnover for the last quarter of the year."

By contrast, the commercial letting market reported a regressive development as the letting market generally lags the economic situation. The Rental Climate, a subcomponent of the Real Estate Climate mirroring expectations of rents and returns, dropped slightly by 0.3% in the month.

The real estate segments matched the reticent growth of the other climate indicators in October. The substantial hikes of the previous month have given way to modest gains in the lower single-digit range. Respondents were once again most skeptical in regard to office real estate. Retail, by contrast, showed the highest gain in sentiment at 5.5%. Residential remained the only segment that scored a majority of positive ratings.

"Against this background, the sentiment reflected in this low-level improvement of the climate matches the current economic situation--and yet it is indeed a sign of hope and of confidence in the German real estate market." The poll is conducted on behalf of King Sturge by the consultancy firm of BulwienGesa.