Global RE Portfolio Needs N. American Anchor

A global real estate investment portfolio should be anchored by a "significant" component of North American real estate, according to a new Ibbotson Associates study commissioned by the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts.Ibbotson said it explored optimal global real estate allocations by creating and comparing the performance of optimal portfolios based on two methodologies: one that constructed portfolio performance using historical investment returns for various asset classes, and another that projected performance using forward-looking, expected-investment returns. Ibbotson's historical analysis of data for 1990-2005 showed that adding global real estate allocations improved the returns of global portfolios, with nearly all the increase coming from U.S. real estate investment, according to Thomas Idzorek, Ibbotson's vice president of research and product development and co-author of the study. NAREIT can be found online at http://www.nareit.com.