In this paper we examine the relationship between debt flexibility and investment. Employing a hand-collected sample of debt structures of 102 European public real estate companies, we construct measures of the companies’ ability to substitute bank loans with other forms of debt. Our results show that there is a statistically and economically significant effect of debt flexibility on the investment activity of European listed real estate companies, the effect increasing during times of tight bank lending constraints. We confirm that the effect is linked to the debt structure, rather than the general degree of indebtness (leverage) of the company and robust to alternative specifications and to controlling for the institutional differences between countries.