Over the past three years, the real estate story told in the headlines has been almost entirely macro: Rates rose, cap rates followed, asset values reset, and transaction markets slowed. That picture is accurate enough, but it obscures something far more consequential for the private wealth community. While institutions absorbed markdowns and adjusted allocations, high-net-worth (accredited, often referred to as retail) investors lived through an entirely different cycle. Their experience was sharper, more personal, and in many cases more damaging than anything reflected in public commentary.
If you want to understand where private wealth capital is heading in 2026, you have to start with what these investors actually went through. Advisers now sit squarely between that lived experience and a generational buying window in real estate. In effect, advisers have become the credibility firewall. And that shift is already reshaping how capital will be allocated in the next phase o
