Accurately predicting the future level of commercial real estate development in Europe has been adversely affected by a lack of understanding of the key influences on that commercial development. Previous research has tended to focus on modelling the influences on commercial real estate development in the UK, and London in particular. The failure to focus on European markets is partly because of a lack of time series data. Using a previously unexploited data series this paper draws upon previous research and attempts to apply a standard model to explain historical development levels in European office markets. Four major European cities are modelled to compare the results and assess the usefulness of this approach for forecasting purposes. The results show that modelling is partly hindered by the short length of the time series available, but the models perform adequately in explaining office development. There is however a large proportion of the variation in office development which is unexplained by the models used. However the approach adopted makes an important contribution to understanding the drivers of office development in previously under-researched European markets.

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