The 2009 Editorial Advisory Board of the Institutional Real Estate Letter – North America convened in mid-April to discuss the challenges and opportunities in today’s institutional real estate investment marketplace. “The money” at this year’s meeting — the institutional investor members of the board who collectively represent $95.1 billion in real estate assets — spoke frankly about portfolio write-downs, strategic planning and the future of real estate investing in the long and short term. Real estate managers, consultants and staff members of Insitutional Real Estate, Inc., also in attendance, came to hear the investors’ concerns, to see who had money to spend and to understand how they intended to spend it. The topic on the top of everyone’s mind was the current economic recession and the toll it is taking on institutional real estate portfolios.
“How many of you believe that write-downs could get as deep as 50 percent?” IREI CEO Geoffrey Do
