The more things change, the more they stay the same,” said Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, a 19th-century French critic.
“The answer is always 9 percent.”
“Every real estate asset is different.”
If you joined the institutional real estate industry in its first 15 or 20 years, these two statements may be familiar to you. Both were constantly repeated by real estate veterans migrating to the institutional side who were primarily bankers, brokers and REIT executives.
The former represents return expectations in a world where real estate was acquired and owned on an unleveraged basis. As of Sept. 30, 2025, the NCREIF Property Index (NPI) has delivered a cumulative return of approximately 9.7 percent annualized since its inception in fourth quarter 1977. This reflects the unle
