Securitisation and the increased sophistication of the real estate industry have led to new ways to repackage property assets to create a broader menu of investment opportunities. However, the risk, return and liquidity attributes of these investments vary greatly.

This paper provides an overview of different real estate investment strategies based on three risk-return styles (core, value-added and opportunistic) and four quadrants of real estate investing, based on whether they are equity or debt and traded in the public (listed) or private markets.

Risk – return styles

Figure 1 shows three key risk-return styles for real estate investing: core, value-added and opportunistic.

Core real estate…