TY - JOUR T1 - Benefits of Real Estate Investment JF - The Journal of Portfolio Management SP - 28 LP - 33 DO - 10.3905/jpm.2003.319903 VL - 29 IS - 5 AU - Georgi Georgiev AU - Bhaswar Gupta AU - Thomas Kunkel Y1 - 2003/08/31 UR - https://pm-research.com/content/29/5/28.abstract N2 - Real estate investment represents a significant part of many institutional portfolios. Since real estate is not directly traded on a centralized exchange, the physical real estate market is characterized by relative lack of liquidity, large lot size, and high transactions costs with properties that are fixed at a location and heterogeneous. The low transparency of the real estate marketplace also results in potential asymmetric information. This provides a source of relatively high risk-adjusted returns to those individuals who can obtain costless “;quality” information. Furthermore, the lack of frequent transaction data for the analysis of return distributions often necessitates the use of appraisal-based series. In this article, the authors examine the benefits of real estate investments as part of an investor's overall asset portfolio. ER -