Institutional Benchmarks for International Real Estate Investment

Executive Summary.Before institutional real estate investors will consider investing in a country other than the domestic economy, they usually require information about expected risks and returns. In recent years the Investment Property Databank (IPD) has begun assembling return data for over twenty countries. This study discusses the data for each country, by property type, and summarizes the returns, risks (standard deviation), and coefficient of variation (risk per unit of return). The results indicate that there are significant diversification benefits from combining real estate investments from certain countries. However, other combinations provide no significant benefits.