The era of predictable returns in European real estate is officially over. With volatility rising and core capital vanishing, investors and operators face a landscape where business as usual no longer applies.
In this first episode of ‘Havenstone Stack’ we pull back the curtain on the current state of pan-European finance to uncover where the real opportunities lie.
We explore the impact of the massive structural shift from equity to private debt that started back in 2023 and explain the challenges of underwriting deals at a moment where low cost of capital buyers may not be there to assure the exit. You will also hear why adopting a mindset of failing fast, cheap and often can be your greatest asset in deal-making.
Your hosts are Antonio Dias and Bruno Silva, partners at Havenstone Capital. Bringing together backgrounds in law, engineering, finance, investment banking and both private equity and private debt, they offer a unique, quantitative perspective on the entire capital stack across Europe.
THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
- The structural shift to private debt markets
- Why equity capital markets remain sluggish
- Adopting a fail fast, fail cheap mindset
- Current trends in Living versus Office sectors
- The resurgence of retail and hospitality assets
GUEST DETAILS
Antonio Dias and Bruno Silva are the partners behind Havenstone Capital, a pan-European investment advisory firm.
Antonio combines a legal and finance backgrounds with deep investment banking and investment expertise, while Bruno brings 17 years of technical experience as a structural engineer and real estate developer.
Together, they specialise in bridging funding gaps across the capital stack, covering markets from Portugal to Eastern Europe.
QUOTES
Nothing is business as usual. There's no longer business as usual. Everybody, basically is scrambling to find a new normal. - Antonio Dias
We saw this structural change in the Pan European real estate market where private debt started yielding returns in between the eight to 12%. - Bruno Silva
There is a culture [at Havenstone] of [...] fail fast, fail cheap, fail often. You only learn, or you learn mostly from setbacks and from failing. You don't really learn a lot from success.
- Antonio Dias
Nobody wants to be caught in the way of a falling knife, as values or appraisals were correcting across Europe. - Bruno Silva
Banks are not as fast as an alternative lender, and what we see is private debt... in this more sexy, so to speak, asset classes. - Bruno Silva
KEYWORDS
#EuropeanRealEstate #PrivateDebt #CapitalStack #InvestmentBanking #CommercialFinance
MORE INFORMATION
Havenstone Capital is a Real Estate Investment and Asset Management firm with a pan-European focus. Leveraging on the team’s extensive experience on both the Equity and Debt markets, Havenstone Capital is dedicated to managing investments across the entire investment cycle in the real estate market by managing and funding real estate projects in various asset classes.
What is Havenstone Stack?
Most finance podcasts cover US markets. We give you Europe.
Hosts António Dias and Bruno Silva bring you direct access to the senior investors, lenders, and developers making billion-euro decisions in real estate across Europe—from Madrid to Warsaw, Milan to the Nordics.
Europe isn’t one market — it’s a bundle of different jurisdictions and capital dynamics. Each country carries its own risk profile, structural constraints, and liquidity cycle.
We examine how institutional players navigate this fragmentation: where private debt is gaining ground, why some asset classes are under pressure while others return to favour, and how the capital stack is being rewritten in real time.
No fluff. Just experienced deal-makers discussing what's working, what's failing, and what's next.