Real Estate Services and a Globalized Asset Class‪.‬

The last 20 years of the 20th Century will go down as a period when the international real estate market achieved two things: maturity and global spread. Like a wayward teenager, real estate learned from its mistakes, went to college and became better educated and then demonstrated more prudence and caution than previously. At the same time, with international commerce, trade liberalization, and globalized capital came a passport and escalating air miles. In the early years of the new century, real estate, on a risk-adjusted basis, looks like a preferred investment asset class throughout much of the world. Cycles come and go, but supply and demand are, for the most part, relatively well balanced in historic terms in most countries. Prices are shifting incrementally rather than dramatically and the volume and profile of capital and debt entering the sector is far better regulated and subject to far more due diligence than before. With an aging global demographic and volatility in other asset classes, real estate has become a target for both venture capital and annuity, bond-style investors seeking retirement profile income. "How are we going to fund our retirement?" is Item One on the sociopolitical agenda in the Western world with real estate right there alongside in the action column. Expectations are high.