We present a global ranking of asset managers in real estate and infrastructure, based on a manager survey conducted by Property Funds Research.  

Declines in European property prices have put lenders on watch for the impact on loan collateral. We present a tool to visualize the change in prices and the portion of assets that may be troubled.

We examine the results of the newly launched MSCI Europe Quarterly Private Real Estate Debt Fund Index to identify which loan strategies drove returns in 2023 and how the performance compared against real-estate equity funds in Europe.

Investors are still waiting for a recovery in commercial real estate. We outline the state of play in early 2024 and identify potential signposts for an upturn in the asset class.  

After the market dislocation of 2023, investors will be hoping for a calmer 2024 in commercial real estate. We identify five key influences to help investors navigate the challenges and opportunities ahead.  

For many real-estate investors, property-type and geography segmentations are the primary lens through which they measure and manage their portfolios. But could real-estate style factors play a role in helping investors manage their portfolios more systematically? 

It is increasingly clear that commercial real estate is experiencing a downturn but, due to the relative opacity of private real estate, it is not clear how much further we may have to go before we reach the bottom. Industry veterans David Green-Morgan and Will Robson join us for an in-depth discussion on performance drivers and where investors may be focused as 2023 marches on.

Global real estate markets enjoyed their strongest returns since the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) as they bounced back from COVID-19-induced weakness last year.

Global real estate returns accelerated to 17.8% on a 12-month rolling basis in the first quarter of 2022 despite the growing headwinds of geopolitical tensions and associated rising inflation and interest rates, the debut results of the MSCI Global Quarterly Property Index show.

As 2021 real estate index returns roll in, we’ve seen a broad-based acceleration of returns across nearly all countries and property types. But what can looking beyond the aggregate index returns tell us about the difference between the winners and losers?

Private-asset investors are waking up to the urgency of the climate crisis, while dealing with other long-term disruptive trends that accelerated during the pandemic. We may see a substantial reallocation of capital as investors respond to these challenges.

Real estate investors have increasingly sought pan-regional funds to diversify globally. But such funds’ exposures can be significantly different from the market at large. What’s an appropriate benchmark for these diversified fund investments?

Many investors have made bold commitments to transition their real estate portfolios to net-zero carbon emissions and are now developing and implementing plans to achieve this goal. But what could this transition look like in practice for property portfolios?

The 2015 Paris Agreement seeks to keep the rise in global temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and many governments are aiming for 1.5°C through nationally determined contributions. What are the implications for real estate markets?

In some parts of the world, the return to the office is no longer theoretical. Companies and workers have seen that there are some parts of some jobs that don’t need to be done in an office. Will office life revert to the mean or will the re-emergence from a fully remote workforce reveal a new normal?

COVID-19 has caused a severe and rapid economic contraction and accelerated secular changes already hitting parts of the real estate markets. Investors face a fundamental question: How will real estate evolve as a sector and asset class? Here are our 2021 real estate trends to watch.

Infrastructure investments have not been spared the effects of the pandemic. A closer look across investment types, subsectors and risk levels over time may provide useful perspective as private-capital firms and their investors manage through.

Will Robson, global head of real estate solutions research, examines the question: “Is it the end of the office as we know it?” He looks at how uncertainty around the potential shift to virtual work and redesigned office spaces may affect commercial real estate valuations, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated existing real estate trends.

From managing climate risk to advances in analytics, 2020 may be a watershed year for real estate. Read our top five emerging trends likely to be front of mind for global real estate investors in 2020 and beyond

This year's research snapshot explores the investment challenges facing the industry from the risks of late cycle investing to disruptive technology and how to incorporate ESG into your investment strategy. The snapshot also provides an overview of global property market trends across sectors and markets and as part of the wider MSCI business we also explore issues relevant to institutional investors, such as looking at real estate in a multi-asset class context.

Property investors who invest across a broad region, like Europe, can use a peer-group benchmark to gauge relative performance. But to determine the specific drivers of returns, detailed asset-level performance attribution can help shed light.

Real estate investors are buying and leasing assets that might be jeopardized by a climate-changed world. A new analysis can help investors identify high-risk U.K. locations.

Media commentary has fixated on the shuttering of shops, while retail-focused REITs are priced at substantial discounts to the value of their assets. Have appraisers of retail real estate been excessively bullish?

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 (ESG) risks; geopolitical uncertainty; and disruptive technology.

This year’s Real Estate Research Snapshot highlights the broad range of investment problems MSCI Real Estate’s data can be applied to.

Investors allocate to private real estate for a myriad of reasons, which means their investment objectives can vary substantially.

While not quite as profound as the Shakespearean original, it is still quite a tricky one for real estate investors to grapple with. Until fairly recently, it is one that has been avoided by the majority of real estate investors due to their heavy home bias. But the increasing global nature of the asset class, combined with rising currency volatility, means the question is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid.

Due to the private nature of real estate, investors are often faced with making decisions based on broad market-level information or data relating to a rarified class of hypothetical, top-quality, perfectly located, “prime” benchmark properties, which, much like Peter Pan, never age.

Retailer bankruptcies, department store struggles and empty malls have dominated recent headlines. The apparent culprit? A massive movement toward online shopping, driven by retail giants such as Amazon and Walmart.

When developing investment strategies, institutional investors in private real estate tend to rely on market-level performance data. But many real estate investors know that every asset is different and even two seemingly identical assets in the same area can produce very different returns. How can they better understand the true risk underlying their exposures when developing their strategies?