The growth of the REIT structure globally presents both opportunities and challenges to investors and emerging REITs.

Looking back over the thousands of topics we’ve discussed at the hundreds of advisory board meetings we’ve conducted over the years in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific, three persistent questions seem to crop up at some point in the discussions.

A total US$188.5 billion in outbound capital went into real estate in the 12 months to third quarter 2018, according to Knight Frank’s most recent Cross-Border Investor Dashboard, which cites data from Real Capital Analytics.

Malaysia’s Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB) and the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) are jointly acquiring phase two of London’s Battersea Power Station (BPS) property project for £1.583 billion (US$1.99 billion) from the Malaysian consortium that owns the entire development.

The end of 2018 was a painful one for broader equities, with the MSCI World Index declining by 7.8 percent in December. Property stocks continued to perform well on a relative basis, however, because of investors’ increasingly risk-adverse posture and the sector’s more localised economic exposure.