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Building Investor Confidence: Real Estate Investors Are Demanding Greater Transparency and Better Information
The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 changed everything. Almost overnight, investors moved from a world of apparent certainty and stability to a world of great uncertainty and potential instability. Few would now argue against the conventional wisdom that uncertainty is here to stay, for the foreseeable — or unforeseeable — future.
As its name suggests, the crisis has left no-one around the world — and certainly no investor or asset class — untouched. Real estate, for all its local roots, is now an unashamedly global investment asset, open to the free movement of capital seeking to optimise risk-adjusted returns.
In this brave — or, many would say, fearful — new world, most investors are looking for solidity rather than excitement; possible losses frequently loom larger in their imaginations than possible gains. Real estate professionals can justifiably argue that their asset class has an important role in this kind of environment — as much as anything bec