Global Investor Briefing — May 2026

Executive Summary

• Nothing really moved in the scores this month — the majority of markets were stable.
• The quiet story is the currency market, and it's anything but quiet. The shekel is the strongest it has been in a generation — about 2.87 to the dollar (levels last seen in 1993), 3.33 to the euro and 3.85 to the pound, against last-year averages near 3.89 and 4.55. For anyone earning in shekels, euro-, dollar- and pound-priced property is effectively 14–19% cheaper than it was a year ago — before prices moved at all.
• The one name maybe worth a second look is the UAE. It lost the most (−1.9 points) and slipped from 3rd to 6th. This is a technical correction, not a market story: the scoring method now weighs data availability more heavily, and the UAE's data gaps cost it the points. Notably, even a data shortage only moves it from a 3rd-place market to a 6th-place one — which says something about its underlying strength. We'd encourage the Emirates to publish market data consistently; the fundamentals clearly aren't the problem.
• Greece and Spain are diverging. Greece is our withdrawal candidate: the Bank of Greece's own flow data shows foreign property investment falling about 25% in 2025 — an early confirmation signal, pending its integration into our index. Spain is the surprise: it closed the door on investor residency decisively — and the market barely noticed. Foreign purchases set a new record in 2025, and on the data Spain remains firmly in expansion–peak territory.

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This Month's Score — Top 5

Compared against last month's baseline (see methodology note). Scores are out of 100.

| Rank | Market | Score | vs. last month | Rank move | |------|--------|-------|----------------|-----------| | 1 | United States | 77.8 | −0.7 | — | | 2 | Denmark | 76.7 | −0.1 | — | | 3 | Poland | 75.2 | −0.8 | ↑ 1 (was 4th) | | 4 | Netherlands | 74.6 | −0.1 | ↑ 2 (was 6th) | | 5 | United Kingdom | 74.4 | −0.8 | — |

The top of the table is essentially unchanged. The US holds first, Denmark holds second. The UAE slipped out of 3rd place, which let Poland and the Netherlands each move up a rung or two.

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Movers

No market crossed our 2-point reporting line this month — up or down. The UAE's −1.9 was the largest single move; as noted above, it reflects a technical refinement in how the score weighs data availability, not a change in the market itself. Every other UAE component — economy, yields, tax, regulation, prices, currency — was unchanged.

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Cycle Phase Watch

Greece: a withdrawal candidate. Spain: surprisingly, still at peak.

This month's central-bank check shows the two most-watched foreign-buyer markets in Europe now point in different directions:

• Spain — surprisingly, still firmly in expansion–peak territory. Spain didn't merely end its Golden Visa in April 2025 — it closed the door on investor residency decisively and unambiguously. The remarkable part is what happened next: nothing slowed down. Spain's property registrars recorded ~97,300 foreign home purchases in 2025 — a new record, up from ~93,000 in 2024 (the foreign share eased from 14.6% to 13.8% only because the overall market grew even faster). Prices and transaction volume are still climbing — though we note this reflects the data through 2025; no figures have yet been published that would indicate the 2026 trend. Our Eurostat foreign-investment series was likewise still rising at its last available reading (150.8 → 157.3 → 164.0 → 167.9 → 182.3 through 2023). On the data, Spain remains at peak — and peak is a dynamic state; markets can keep setting higher peaks for years. The door has been slammed; the market, so far, hasn't flinched. We watch for the first data signal that it's being felt.
• Greece — the withdrawal candidate. The Eurostat series runs to 2024 and is still rising (to 113.2). But the early signal has arrived: Bank of Greece flow data shows foreign investment into Greek property fell about 25% in 2025 (roughly €2.06bn vs the record €2.75bn in 2024, with every quarter down 25–35% year-on-year). Add the easing transaction volume, and Greece warrants genuine caution — pending this flow data being normalized into our index, which is what would settle the call.

Final confirmation in the series we index against (Eurostat FDI-RE) arrives slowly — the activity-level breakdown is released roughly two years after the reference year, so the 2024 readings are expected around late 2026 and 2025 around late 2027. The central-bank series above give us the earlier read in the meantime.

Leaving correction (the encouraging side):

• United Kingdom, Germany, and the Czech Republic all moved from correction into recovery — the early, often best-value part of the cycle.

Is there a buy signal in the recovery trio? Our methodology looks for four conditions lining up: transaction volume turning up (the leading signal), foreign-capital inflow confirming, supply staying contained, and prices turning (the lagging confirmation). Here's where each stands:

• United Kingdom — the strongest alignment, with one honest asterisk. Volume has turned up (index 85 → 90 into 2025), inventory keeps tightening (64 → 63), new construction is barely growing (110 → 112), and prices have turned (132 → 136 after two down years). Three of the four legs point the right way. The asterisk is the foreign-inflow leg — for two reasons. First, the available UK series measures whole-economy FDI — industry, technology and finance as well as property — so it can only ever be an indicative signal for housing, not a definitive one. Second, the official picture is genuinely mixed: ONS data shows UK inward FDI fell sharply in 2024 (flows down £27.9bn to £13.4bn), while the early quarterly readings for 2025 point to a renewed pickup (Q4 2025 net inflows of roughly £25bn). The full official 2025 figure lands in late 2026. So: a genuine early-recovery setup, with the inflow leg pointing tentatively in the right direction but not yet confirmed.
• Germany — promising but unconfirmed. Volume is recovering (82 → 88) and prices have turned (148 → 152.7). The striking feature is supply: housing starts have fallen hard for three straight years (112 → 95 → 88), which sets up a squeeze later in the decade. But foreign inflows were essentially flat at the last reading (154.0 → 154.7) and inventory is loosening slightly (65 → 68). Two conditions met, two not yet.
• Czech Republic — the window has likely passed. Volume is recovering (92 → 98) but foreign investment was declining at its last reading (190.5 → 185.1), and prices didn't wait for anyone — up over 10% in 2025 alone (222.3 → 245.4). The lagging indicator has already run, which is usually what you see after the value moment, not before it.

Bottom line: no market in the trio registers a complete four-condition signal yet. The UK has the strongest alignment but its inflow leg is unresolved; Germany needs inflow confirmation; the Czech recovery is real but already priced.

Still where they were:

• Portugal remains in withdrawal — no change.
• Israel remains in correction — but with a first swallow worth naming. The latest CBS releases show apartment prices rising 0.3% month-on-month and up 1.6% since the start of the year, even as the annual reading is still negative (−1.2%). One or two monthly prints do not change a phase — our phases are set by the annual data, and the annual line still says correction. But this is exactly what the early edge of a recovery tends to look like, and we will be watching the coming CBS releases closely.
• Canada now reads as correction, with prices actually falling (its house-price index dropped year-on-year). The only market in the set showing an outright price decline.

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Currency Watch: a generational window for shekel buyers

Our market scores treat currency stability as one input among many, and on that measure little changed this month. But standing still in the scores does not mean standing still in the world — the currency moves of the past year are still reverberating, and they are reshaping who can afford what, where.

Nowhere is this more striking than for shekel earners. The shekel now trades at about 2.87 to the dollar — territory last visited in 1993 — after strengthening roughly 18% against the dollar over twelve months. Against the euro it stands near 3.33, compared with an average of about 3.89 across last year, and against the pound near 3.85, versus a 2025 average of about 4.55 — the pound has given up nearly a fifth of its value against the shekel in a year. What that means at the property level:

• Berlin (euro) — a €500,000 apartment that would have cost a shekel buyer roughly ₪1.95 million a year ago costs about ₪1.67 million today — some ₪280,000 less, before the property market itself has moved a centimeter. And Berlin sits in a market our cycle model has just moved from correction into recovery — the part of the cycle where value hunters traditionally do their best work.
• Manchester (pound) — in the UK's classic yield cities, the move is even sharper. A £250,000 flat in Manchester — the kind of rental-yield purchase the UK market is known for — has gone from roughly ₪1.14 million at last year's average rate to about ₪960,000 today: roughly ₪175,000 less, in the one market in our set that is closest to a textbook buy signal (see Cycle Phase Watch).
• Miami (dollar) — among the US metros we cover, a $400,000 Miami condo that priced at about ₪1.35 million a year ago prices at roughly ₪1.15 million today — around ₪200,000 less — in the market that holds the #1 spot in our table.

Currency windows of this size are rare, and they do not announce their closing dates. We are not in the business of predicting exchange rates — but we are in the business of pointing out when the ground has shifted this much, and it has.

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Regulatory / Tax Updates

Two standing items are worth keeping in front of buyers because they shape the markets above:

• Netherlands — good news for investors: the transfer tax on homes that aren't the buyer's main residence was cut from 10.4% to 8% from 1 January 2026, a deliberate move to draw investors back into the rental market. Directly relevant to anyone buying-to-let there, and the Netherlands is climbing our table.
• Canada — the federal ban on most foreign residential buyers runs to 1 January 2027. It applies to existing homes (up to three units) in major urban areas, with meaningful exemptions: purchases for development, vacant land, and certain work-permit holders. Province-level surcharges apply on top (Ontario 25%, BC 20%). Worth watching: in December 2025 the government opened a formal review of what replaces the ban after 2027, with an Australia-style model on the table — foreign buyers permitted for new construction but barred from existing homes. The door that is currently closed may reopen partway.

For background on Spain (Golden Visa ended 3 April 2025) and Greece (Golden Visa now at €800K in high-demand zones — Athens/Attica, Thessaloniki, Mykonos, Santorini and larger islands — with €400K elsewhere and €250K for commercial-to-residential conversions or listed-building restorations), see the editorial drafts noted below. These are the policy shifts that put both markets on watch — but they are not in themselves proof of a phase change.

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Methodology note: Scores use CASABROVA Score v6, our single canonical model, cut on the 1st of each month. This edition compares the 1 June 2026 monthly cut against the 19 May 2026 cut — used as the baseline because it's the most recent cut on the current methodology (no earlier monthly cut exists yet). Cycle-signal observations describe where our published indicators stand relative to our methodology; they are general information, not investment, legal or tax advice, and exchange rates can move against buyers as well as in their favor.

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Sources

• CASABROVA production database — monthly score cuts of 1 June 2026 vs 19 May 2026
• Eurostat — inward FDI positions, real-estate activities (NACE L), 2015=100
• Bank of Greece — direct investment flows into real estate (2024–2025)
• Colegio de Registradores (Spain) — foreign-buyer transaction data (2024–2025)
• Government of Canada (Dept. of Finance) — foreign-buyer prohibition extension; business.gov.nl — 2026 transfer-tax change
• FX: CASABROVA FX feed (ECB daily reference rates, 2026-06-03) for current EUR/ILS, EUR/USD and EUR/GBP crosses; Trading Economics / exchange-rates.org / poundsterlinglive for 12-month changes, the 1993 comparison, and 2025 averages (EUR/ILS ~3.89, GBP/ILS ~4.55)
• Canada review: Government of Canada / CMHC (ban scope and exemptions); Bloomberg, Dec 2025 (post-2027 review)
• UK FDI context: ONS, Foreign direct investment involving UK companies (2024 bulletin)
• Israel: CBS apartment price index, latest monthly releases (May–June 2026)