It should have come as no surprise to anyone that when INREV, the European Association for Investors in Non-Listed Real Estate Vehicles, released the results of its 2010 investor intentions survey, good ol’ safe core was the strategy favoured by an overwhelming majority of investors (78 percent in 2010 compared with 38 percent in 2009).

The massive real estate correction that began in 2008 is causing investors to rethink how they design, implement and monitor their investment programmes. In the new investment climate, new questions have arisen. Did the use of leverage improve risk-adjusted performance or was it simply a tool to amplify returns? Did the early success of some funds breed ever-larger funds that were doomed to fail? What is the relationship between investment vintage period and the economic cycle?

Geoffrey Dohrmann, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Letter – Europe and president and CEO of Institutional Real Estate, Inc, recently sat down with one-time bond trader, now full-time author Michael Lewis to talk about the collapse of the financial market, Wall Street’s day of reckoning and Lewis’s new book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine,which takes a look at the few investors who bet against subprime loans in 2005, predicted the financial meltdown and made money in the process.