In this edition of Institutional Real Estate Americas, you’ll find two related articles — one by Steve Bergsman on real estate’s role in the portfolio (“The case for real estate, revisited”), and the other by Roy Schneiderman on the potential dangers inherent in overreliance on benchmarks (“Focusing on benchmarks”).

Bergsman and the people he interviewed for his feature point to the fact today’s low-yield environment is the primary force driving today’s higher allocations to real estate and other alternatives. Bergsman also points out some investors today are drawing on the higher cash flows real estate can deliver as a proxy for what’s missing in their bond