Words matter. We all know that. And somebody’s been playing word games on Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia entry for “Institutional real estate” has been eliminated, and replaced with a new entry called “Private equity real estate.” The entry states: “In investment finance, Private Equity Real Estate is an asset class consisting of equity and debt investments in property.”

This would appear to be an intentional manipulation on the part of the poster, who obviously stands to benefit from positioning the term “private equity real estate” as the definitive term for institutional real estate investing.

The fact is, private equity real estate, as its name implies, refers only to real estate in the private equity markets and has nothing to do with the type of investor making the investment. Rather, it has to do with the quadrant in which the investor is investing.

The private equity markets represent only one of the classic capital market quadrants: p