Investors of all shapes and sizes, by definition, have assets and liabilities. They are doing what we all do — they are saving, putting money aside, for a reason, for use in the future. The timeframes for the liabilities will be different and variable across investor types, but all investors will have return and performance objectives designed to enable their assets to grow and meet their liabilities as they fall due, hopefully with a surplus building up over time. A surplus will give investors a degree of comfort that they will not need to adjust their investment strategy, possibly with unintended consequences; as we know only too well from the events of recent years, you never can tell what investment markets and end-investors will do.

In real estate, these return objectives are helped immensely by the income from tenants that is an inherent component of real estate ownership. Asset allocation doesn’t really come into it at this level but it is evident that real estateâ