The private real estate fund industry in the United Kingdom and in the rest of Europe was born in the late 1990s. It took off slowly and had just three or four years of strong growth before the global financial crisis hit us all in 2007–2008. Although there are still clearly issues to deal with, I believe that the industry’s evolution in such a short time is remarkable. It has established methods, processes, professional standards, performance indices and so on in a remarkably quick time.

This, I believe, is testimony to the professionalism of the participants and the very significant contribution made by professional bodies, principally INREV, whose primary constituency is fund investors, and AREF, with a primary membership of fund managers. Both of these organisations arose, in their current form at least, in res