Savills Impacts · October 2026
Liquidity and Scale: How Real Estate Investors Are Adapting
Our summary of a new Savills Impacts article by Oliver Salmon, Director of Savills World Research, on how professional investors are rethinking deal structures, exits and the value of operating expertise.
Our summary of a new Savills Impacts article by Oliver Salmon, Director of Savills World Research, on how professional investors are rethinking deal structures, exits and the value of operating expertise.
c. 20%
Share of new global real estate fund capital since early 2025 aimed at data centres
c. 6%
Average data centre share over the previous five years
40%+
Data centre transactions since 2023 financed through joint venture structures
Figures as reported in the article, citing PERE (fund capital) and MSCI (data centre transactions).
The Key Points
Two trends changing how investors deploy capital
- Bigger deals, not single buildings: investors are increasingly buying whole portfolios, operating platforms and companies rather than one asset at a time, because size itself has become a competitive edge.
- New routes to liquidity: instead of waiting for trading in individual buildings to recover, owners are selling partial stakes, forming joint ventures and using a growing secondary market, where ownership interests change hands without the property itself being sold.
- Capital is changing sectors: funds are moving towards long-term structural themes such as data centres, healthcare and senior living, which adds pressure to release capital from existing holdings.
- Exit planning starts earlier: joint ventures and partial stakes create several opportunities to realise value during an investment, rather than one sale at the end of a fund term that might fall in a downturn.
- Scale brings operating advantages: larger platforms can share fixed costs, centralise administration and raise capital more efficiently, and technology is likely to widen that gap. Buying into an established operator delivers expertise that would take years to build.
- Individual purchases still matter: direct acquisitions of single assets remain central to the market, both because asset selection drives returns and because they set prices. What is evolving is the classic fund model of buying and selling assets one by one within a fixed term.
Why It Matters
Liquidity is planned, not waited for
The article describes investors who no longer wait for a broad recovery in the sale of individual buildings. In a market with higher interest rates and more demanding operations, they look for structures that let them bring in partners, share risk and recycle capital while an investment is still running.
The practical consequence for owners and fund managers is that the exit becomes part of the strategy from the start: who might fund the next stage, which parts of a holding could be passed on, and how any future gains would be split.
“The dual search for liquidity and scale”
Oliver Salmon, Savills World Research, on what increasingly defines the market
Our Perspective
What this means for buyers and investors in the Algarve
The article is about institutional capital: real estate funds, listed companies and operating platforms. It does not analyse Portugal, the Algarve or the private purchase of homes, and it makes no forecast for residential prices. It is best read as background on how professional investors are behaving today.
Two of its ideas still translate well to a private purchase. The first is to think about the exit when you buy: who the likely next buyer is, and how easily the property could be sold if your plans change. The second is that expertise has a value of its own. Investors pay for operating capability because it saves years of learning, and buying in an unfamiliar market works the same way. Our guides to the buying process and to taxes in Portugal are a good place to start.
For more research from the Savills network, see our summaries of the Savills World Cities Prime Residential Index H1 2026 and Savills Global Capital Markets Q2 2026.
Summary prepared by QP Savills, the Savills International Associate for the Algarve. The original article was published by Savills Impacts in October 2026; all figures are as reported there.
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