Nan Leake of Partners Group surveys the institutional real estate landscape and finds a worrisome trend: real estate officers swamping the core sector with investment dollars in the belief it represents a safe harbor.

Leake sees a different narrative taking shape. Pricing for core real estate has escalated to pre-crisis levels, while the fundamentals have eroded. Put pencil to paper and the numbers simply don’t work. Core real estate has become more rocky shoals than safe harbor. There’s inherent risk in the rush to the overheated core market, she says, and the real opportunities can be found in value-added and opportunistic strategies, particularly in the world’s emerging economies.

“Unfortunately,” Leake says, “I think a lot of North American investors have retreated not only back to core real estate but back to the United States and are less interested in going abro