If the real estate investment industry is engaged in a culture war, then the analysis you are about to read might prove to be unpopular with one side or — more likely, both sides of it.

A mainstay of MSCI portfolio performance measurement has long been attribution analysis. This seeks to quantify the extent to which a real estate fund’s performance, relative to its benchmark, has been due to allocation or stock selection. The former factor involves a fund manager’s ability to be underweight in underperforming sectors and overweight in outperforming ones, while the latter is all about enhancing returns by investing in better-performing assets within specific sectors. In essence, is relative performance a function of top-down or bottom-up decisions?

In reality, performance is usually determined by a blend of the two methods. The best investment and research processes are therefore underpinned by collaboration across departments, which represent different sectors an