Global Real Estate's Returns in the Time of COVID

Fritz Louw

The recent market turmoil resembled the 2008 global financial crisis and other volatile periods: We observed a widening of the dispersion of returns across real estate assets, with a large gulf separating the top and bottom performers within a segment. This is shown here by the increase of the interquartile range of asset-value growth (the difference between the 25th and 75th percentiles). This widening spread was most pronounced in retail property — a sector that was under pressure long before the COVID-19 pandemic — particularly in the U.K. Read our blog post on the topic.