With the welcomed arrival of summer, receding memories of 2008 and the ongoing recovery, we are filled with excitement and hope for the future. Now, maybe, is the time to review what we may not know, or may have forgotten, about real estate, and revisit its place within a multi-asset portfolio.

We offer on this balmy day some stylized facts about real estate.

•                Real estate is no one-size-fits-all Platonic investment alternative. In fact, it is so heterogeneous that the term “asset class” seems to hide more than it reveals and even defies logic. It is highly differentiated with regard to performance by property type, MSA, region, lease structure, position in the capital stack and other characteristics.

•                Real estate’s extreme dimensionality makes asset allocation exercises (how much real estate makes sense in a multi-asset portfolio?) even more challenging. Such is also the case w