However, she pointed out that “there’s no shortage of capital”, which was a good sign for the market moving forward, adding that a slight increase in rates would not have a big impact on the market, as they were already at a very low level.
But she was more downbeat, both about the possible impacts of the new COVID variant, Omicron, and the ongoing obstacles faced by the construction sector.
She said confidence that the pandemic could be brought quickly under control with the vaccine roll out had diminished from earlier in the year, with 43% of respondents now saying that it would be two to three years before the market recovered fully from the pandemic, compared to 29% in July.
The concern was that COVID could once again start affecting business travel, which in turn would “obviously hurt” the hotel and hospitality sectors, which were still trying to recover.
Crocker said: “I don’t think that we will get to the levels of shutdown that we did when the pandemic first hit in March, but I think that it injects more uncertainty about employees going back into the office.”
