Industrial properties have become the new darling of real estate investors. Significant global capital is pouring into the buildings where goods are created, stored and shipped. Take a look at the numbers and it is not hard to understand why: record rental income, strong demand and mass disruption from e-commerce calling for new product.

Despite its many benefits, real estate is well known for a few specific characteristics that give private investors pause. Its illiquidity, management fees and high cost to diversify are a few of the most-often cited hurdles. Single-tenant, triple-net leased (NNN) assets, however, can mitigate many of these objections. These investments are stable, income-producing, low-maintenance, bond-like investments that also retain the growth and tax advantages of real estate.

The 1978 film Dawn of the Dead, and the 2004 remake of the same name, both set their action inside a shopping mall, with plucky heroes setting up camp inside retail centers as zombies gather outside. The scenario might sound familiar to investors in traditional retail properties in 2017. One sign of increased distress: More retailers filed for bankruptcy in first quarter 2017 than in all of 2016. It gets even more grisly. Credit Suisse predicted in a new research report than as many as 25 percent of U.S. malls will close by 2022.

Demographics are interesting. The fact that the human population of planet Earth is growing at a rate of about 78 million people per year is something that can make a portfolio manager’s brain shout “Opportunity!” But how does one grasp the significance of so many additional souls being added to the population each and every year, and how does one determine how to deploy resources to benefit from this understanding?

The United States Oil Fund, which tracks West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures, and the United States Brent Oil Fund, which tracks Brent crude oil futures, are down an average of more than 15 percent this year. Predictably, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) looms large in the equation for oil ETFs.

Why do investors tend to be averse to investing in undeveloped land? What are the advantages and disadvantages of investing in raw land? What are some of the factors that need to be taken into consideration when assessing whether an undeveloped parcel is a good investment? Jim McAlister IV, CEO of Rockspring Capital, takes us through the paces in this Q&A excerpted from a podcast interview he recently did with Real Assets Adviser.

Poverty is expensive — not just for people, but for places, too. While cash-strapped cities face a number of challenges, aging infrastructure is perhaps the costliest.

Unfortunately, the time has come for another round in the fight between Mankind and Thomas Malthus. Malthus, a patron saint of pessimists, is an 18th century English philosopher who famously predicted in 1798 that mankind’s exponential population growth will always outpace its ability to grow more food — limiting both absolute population growth and advances in standard of living.

These backseat words — Are we there yet? — are typically the bane of every parent taking the kids on a summer vacation in the family van or SUV. But increasingly they are also being heard at the watering holes and in the executive suites of the movers and shakers in the nonlisted REIT, nonlisted BDC, and direct participation program industry (collectively, “DPPs”)

For astute investors seeking higher yielding assets, their greatest challenge may be finding ways to buy and sell them. Then came a structure called the “interval fund.” Typically available only to institutional investors — who get paid a premium for holding illiquid assets such as private loans, structured credit or commercial real estate debt — regulations from the Securities and Exchange Commission make significant allocations to such asset classes impossible in ordinary mutual funds.

In some regards, Marty Bicknell became the founder and chief executive of Kansas City–based Mariner Wealth Advisors due to a now obscure change to federal securities law in 1975, the so-called May Day deregulation of stockbroker commissions. From that date and change, major U.S. securities firms would largely migrate from a stockbroker-and-client-centric industry to an investment-banker or corporate-finance focus. The eventual emergence of Charles Schwab and other “discount brokerages,” and ever-cheaper online trading platforms such as E*Trade, knifed and then buried the old stockbroker model.