Nowhere to Go

A ton of money sits on the sidelines looking to invest in real estate—is it $50 billion, $70 billion, $100 billion—who really knows? But by all accounts there continues to be plenty of capital that seems priced out of the top markets, remains skittish about everywhere else, or both. The big institutional funds, which have raised the lion’s share of commitments from various pension funds, may be forced into putting dollars out against their better judgment—some are trading among themselves on large packages of the same old trophy or near-trophy assets that keep getting passed around to make fees. In the process some sellers try to pawn off commodity holdings with only mixed success. Smaller investment advisors gnash their teeth—why can’t we raise any capital for our funds? The big guys are hogs and will make bad deals, they claim. But the boutique managers’ problem is they are mostly thinly capitalized and struggle with the legacy of bad deals hurting their fund performance from the last go round. Who wants to take another chance with them when many could go down? But are the smaller guys right about the big guys making bad deals with all the money they have at their disposal?

Maybe, consider…