Up until around the middle of 2024, a certain thesis within real estate investment circles held sway.

It went something like this: Once the era defined by inflated valuations and investment strategies reliant on cheap capital and liquidity blew up in 2022, institutional investment committees took a large step back from real estate allocations. Having already been spooked by the seismic shock that lockdowns had delivered to office markets, they were now dealing with financing costs that were making deals prohibitive, while fixed-income investments of every stripe were riding a wave of central bank tightening.

Compounding this, says Adnan Ozair, head of capital markets at Delancey in London, was the illiquidity of real estate, which inevitably comes to the fore in tough times and causes significant frustration. “Whether in open-end or closed-end structures, liquidity at acceptable pricing often necessitates acknowledging steep losses, further souring sentiment,” he s