The place: Kyoto, Japan, in November of both 2008 and 2017

The event: the Editorial Advisory Board meeting for Institutional Real Estate Asia Pacific

The conclusion: A lot has changed in the past 10 years, but investors should always proceed with caution.

Back in 2008, the global financial crisis was unfolding before investors’ eyes, the result of the junk value of US subprime residential mortgage–backed securities. A multitude of homeowners were underwater on their mortgages, the stock market plummeted, unemployment soared, and values for commercial real estate — the safe-haven diversifier for so many institutional investors — fell in lockstep with bonds and fixed-income assets. As a result, the US government stepped in with unprecedented quantitative easing to try to stabilise markets — a monetary-policy story replayed in nations around the world as the ripple effects reached their shores.