In the year’s final episode of The PERE Podcast, the team breaks down the defining deals, shifting fundraising dynamics and key market trends of the last 12 months.

As the year draws to a close, we will spend the next two weeks breaking down the top private real estate headlines from 2025, as well as the trends that defined market activity. Next week, equity is in the spotlight. This week, the team is zeroing-in on debt, the engine room of the industry.

Lucy Scott sits down with PEI real estate debt gurus Daniel Cunningham, editor of Real Estate Capital Europe, and Samantha Rowan, editor of PERE Credit, to discuss the best-read content of the year, the standout themes and their takes on what these stories tell us about the forces shaping the European and US credit markets.

The team also give their insights on how these themes will play out in 2026. Will competition, a defining feature of the debt markets today, intensify? And if so, where will lenders go to deploy capital and find fresh ways to stay competitive? The team also breaks down the topic of back leverage lending – one of the biggest stories this year – and looks at how this theme might evolve as more lenders seek to use the tool in Europe.

Lending activity is ramping up in European real estate markets amid rising appetite from banks and alternative lenders alike – even as a limited number of investment deals to finance creates intense competition for opportunities.

That is just one of the takeaways from affiliate title Real Estate Capital Europe’s annual Active Lenders report, an exclusive compendium of 64 of the continent’s busiest real estate debt providers through the year’s first three quarters. On this episode, host Greg Dool chats with Real Estate Capital Europe editor Daniel Cunningham and senior reporter Silvia Saccardi for a dive into the key findings, including the fact that this year’s list indicates a resurgence among traditional banks in addition to their alternative counterparts.

Later in the episode, we hear directly from one of those Active Lenders, Leumi UK’s head of property finance Peter Clayton, for his perspective on the list and what it suggests about where the market is headed in 2026.