Real Estate in a Mixed Asset Portfolio

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 8.0, Maastricht University (SBE), course: Investment analysis and portfolio management, language: English, abstract: Most of today's portfolios include bonds and equities. This composition enables investors to reduce firm-specific risk and diversify among different asset classes. Important assets that could further enhance diversification are investments in real estate. The risk-reducing effect of real estate partly stems from its local nature. Furthermore, investors, both local and international, face differences concerning the information available with respect to the real estate market and the bond or stock market. The former offers less information to investors than the latter market. Real estate markets are less integrated, which means that there are not many investments made in this market. This can be a further explanation of the positive diversification effects of real estate. Therefore, one could ask whether direct- or indirect real estate investment enhances diversification. The purpose of this report is to investigate whether there is a positive diversification effect of real estate on the risk of a portfolio.The report takes a look at previous findings of researchers concerning the diversification effect of real estate and proceeds with the analysis of the descriptive statistics. Next, the correlation between indirect and direct real estate, bonds and equity is examined followed by.....