A vibrant city centre, competitive rents and strong connectivity have helped maintain a solid deals pipeline in Leeds and the surrounding region, according to Carter Towler.

Associate director Hazel Cooper and agency surveyor James Jackson spoke to EG in the latest Voice of the Region podcast. Carter Towler is comfortably top of the Radius On Demand Rankings for West Yorkshire for the past 12 months, both in terms of the number of deals done and the amount of space transacted, with 1,019,926 sq ft either let or sold for occupational use across 178 deals.

Both the office and industrial sectors face issues around the supply of new stock, although Jackson says new office developments in Wellington Place and Aire Park are being supplemented by high quality refurbishments of existing space.

There will be a sharp rise in the number of distressed property assets being brought to market this year, according to Watling Real Estate director Jamie Lamond.

Lamond, who is the Radius dealmaker of the month for March with 160,000 sq ft of disposals, says that although the lending markets are structured very differently compared to previous downturns, appointments of administrators and receivers have begun to surge this year and tougher times lie ahead.

He identifies hospitality and the high street as particularly vulnerable, but also expects problems for some assets in the logistics sector as well as London’s office core. However, Lamond believes the situation will not be as profound as the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 due to the weight of money still in the market.

In this episode of the EG Property Podcast, Tim Burke, EG’s deputy editor, sits down with the founders of Vectr7 Investment Partners Mary Criebardis Singh and Dominic Wilson to talk about climate technology investment in the real estate space.

The pair are raising $25m (£19.7m) for the fund, which will invest in companies across Europe with a specific emphasis on greenhouse gas capture or avoidance in the real assets industries, including real estate, infrastructure, transport and utilities.

The fund is targeting cheque sizes of $1m to $3m and will look to invest in around 15 ventures. It has already backed three companies: machine learning powered smart sockets company measurable.energy, hybrid-work management software company Kadence, and local office space and events company Patch.

In this 20-minute discussion, we dive into what the pair hope to achieve with the fund, how we need to redefine how the real assets industry utilises technology to address sustainability issues more widely and the changing nature of investment.