Blog post: Given the heterogeneity of the asset class and that strategies for investing in property vary widely, finding the right benchmark for different portfolios can be a major challenge. Investors may want to ask whether a broad-market or more focused peer-group benchmark is the right tool for the job.

Blog post: Measuring growth in real estate is not a simple matter. Many investors look at asset-value growth, which shows the simple change in property value. Capital growth is more complicated and reflects the capital expenditures needed to maintain and improve properties. The investor’s challenge is to figure out which measure to use.

Blog post: Investors who buy overseas real estate inevitably take on foreign-exchange exposure. Currency volatility sometimes escalates — often spurred by political events like the Brexit referendum — which can put currency risk in stark relief. The resulting forex-market dislocations may result in near-term losses for investors, but also create attractive investment opportunities.

Blog post: For real estate investors, 2019 may be a year of adjusting to rapid changes arising from a variety of sources, including environmental, social and governance-related risks; geopolitical uncertainty; and disruptive technology. We discuss the five emerging real estate trends we view as most likely to impact our clients’ investment decisions in the coming year.

Blog post: Adept real estate investors ensure they properly employ and interpret the metrics they rely on to make decisions. Yet, measuring capital growth in real estate portfolios can cause confusion, leading to important consequences. Using the MSCI UK Quarterly Property Index we illuminate important distinctions between capital growth and asset-value growth.

Research paper: At MSCI Real Estate we are seeing a greater demand from clients for benchmarking and the analytics to aid decision and communication right across the investment process, from allocation to execution. Our latest paper outlines the need for a coherent benchmarking framework to better understand the drivers of performance, irrespective of the portfolio's structure or investment objectives.

Blog post: Real estate investors sometimes treat core and opportunistic funds differently, but comparing the two showed similar cyclical patterns.  Are there further insights to gain by using relative market analysis for opportunistic strategies?

Blog post: Real estate investors have historically had a strong home bias. However, the increasingly global nature of the asset class, combined with rising currency volatility, means deciding whether to hedge currency risk or not is becoming an important consideration.