Something may be said to be “as safe as houses”, but the future of the real estate industry may be at risk if the industry doesn’t do a better job of marketing its services.

So said Paul Trickett, Goldman Sachs’s global portfolio solutions supremo when he addressed the IPD European Property Investment Conference in Frankfurt last year. Property is increasingly marginalised within institutional investors’ asset allocation, said Trickett. This is difficult to comprehend given that we live in a world that is generally de-risking — defined benefit (DB) pension schemes due to their demographic liabilities and insurance companies and banks for regulatory reasons.

UK pension funds alone have around £1 trillion (€1.15 trillion) of assets, y