Providing transparency and standards to the global real estate industry

Real estate is an important asset class – and one that is quickly evolving.  Pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds have long held real estate in their multi-asset class portfolios, primarily as a source of diversification.  In recent years, however, institutional investors have begun to adopt a more modern approach to investing in public and private real estate.  The wide spectrum of performance possible within the real estate market – from bond-like income to equity-like growth – makes real estate a powerful and uniquely flexible asset class with which to manage risk.

The difficulty for real estate investors is that individual real estate properties don’t meet the usual tests for market efficiency.  Every property is unique, and infrequent trading makes the market illiquid.  Transparency is also an issue because knowledge of markets is often local and restricted.

MSCI is committed to helping the real estate investment sector raise its information, reporting and transparency standards to the level of the mainstream exchange traded asset classes.  Applying our expertise in performance and risk analytics to the real estate industry, we provide critical business intelligence to real estate owners, managers, brokers and occupiers around the world.

Because we understand the public and private real estate investment process, we play a central role in the real estate industry through four types of activities.

1. Releasing headline financial performance indexes on real estate markets around the world to enhance transparency.

2. Providing confidential benchmarking services to investment managers and asset owners.

3. Providing research to asset owners, REIT managers, academics and trade associations, as well as to our clients and sponsors.

4. Issuing guidelines and standards to document the regulatory compliance of our processes and policies and support consistent real estate measurement worldwide.

To read more short stories about real estate, please visit our blog.