Insights

Real Estate & Construction Insights.
The latest real estate & construction news and insights from Cobalt and our network.
Built Environment Skills Gap: Recruitment, Retention & AI

Built Environment Skills Gap: Recruitment, Retention & AI

Maria Sinclair, Managing Director UK at Cobalt Recruitment, explores why the built environment skills gap goes beyond recruitment, examining retention, career awareness, AI, apprenticeships and what the industry can do to build a stronger talent pipeline.
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Wednesday Market Insights: Confidence Returns, Expectations Rise

Wednesday Market Insights: Confidence Returns, Expectations Rise

This week's Wednesday Market Insights explores renewed hiring confidence across UK real estate finance, rising workload pressures in facilities management, and what these market signals mean for recruitment across the built environment
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Wednesday Market Insights: Beyond the Skills Shortage

Wednesday Market Insights: Beyond the Skills Shortage

The built environment’s workforce needs are becoming increasingly complex. This edition of Wednesday Market Insights explores the Map the Gap campaign, the growing importance of sustainability capability across the development lifecycle, and the evolving talent requirements of the later living sector.
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Why Developers Are Hiring Before the Market Fully Recovers

Why Developers Are Hiring Before the Market Fully Recovers

Major land acquisitions are signalling renewed confidence across the residential development sector. Discover why developers are recruiting strategically before the market fully recovers, the skills in demand, and what Cobalt's Development Index reveals about the future of hiring.
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Wednesday Market Insights: Regeneration Hiring & Interim Construction Leadership

Wednesday Market Insights: Regeneration Hiring & Interim Construction Leadership

A weekly round-up of the hiring trends shaping the built environment. This edition explores how regeneration hiring is becoming part of project strategy and why interim construction leadership is increasingly used to protect project delivery.
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UKREiiF 2026: From Ambition to Execution

UKREiiF 2026: From Ambition to Execution

Cobalt's read on the UK's leading real estate investment and infrastructure forum, from our team on the ground in Leeds across all three days.
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Diversity in the Property Sector 2026: Why Representation, Transparency and Psychological Safety Matter

Diversity in the Property Sector 2026: Why Representation, Transparency and Psychological Safety Matter

Diversity in the property sector is improving, with gender pay gaps narrowing and greater transparency emerging. However, representation at senior levels, psychological safety and inclusive leadership remain critical to achieving lasting progress across real estate and construction.
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Wednesday Market Insights - Edition One

Wednesday Market Insights - Edition One

Wednesday Market Insights from Cobalt, Edition 1 UKREiiF Review: Realistic, not Optimistic what UKREiiF 2026 actually said.
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From skills-led to demand-led: what the CSMB's new model means for how construction teams are built

From skills-led to demand-led: what the CSMB's new model means for how construction teams are built

Construction News' April long read on the new Construction Skills Mission Board marks a quiet but important shift in how the sector's skills problem is being framed. For hiring leaders, the shift is the story.
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Mental Health in Facilities Management

Mental Health in Facilities Management

How can Facilities Management as a profession attract and retain staff by tackling potential and actual mental health challenges within it? See in this piece, part of a wider feature in the Facilities Management Journal.
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The FM Fix Podcast: What FM recruiters actually look for

The FM Fix Podcast: What FM recruiters actually look for

Watch or listen as our Associate Director in Facilities Management recruitment, Chris Sycamore, joins The FM Fix podcast from expansive to talk through the FM recruitment landscape for both candidates and employers in 2026.
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The Development Index is out now

The Development Index is out now

Featuring insight from industry leaders at the UK’s leading property developers, housebuilders, REITs, and investment firms, The Development Index 2026 is an all-encompassing appraisal of what’s happening across the development lifecycle now, and what employers and employees within it need to know going into 2026 and beyond.
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