In two recent papers Byrne and Lee (2006, 2007) examined the geographical concentration of institutional office and retail investment in England and Wales at two points in time; 1998 and 2003. The findings indicate that commercial office portfolios are concentrated in a very few urban areas,...

This paper uses data provided by three major real estate advisory firms to investigate the level and pattern of variation in the measurement of historic real estate rental values for the main European office centres. The paper assesses the extent to which the data providing organizations agree...

This paper examines the regional investment practices of institutional investors in the commercial real estate office market in 1998 and 2003 in England and Wales. Consistent with previous studies in the US the findings show that investors concentrate their holdings in a few (urban) areas and...

Risk diversification is important to all investors. However, commercial real estate investors in the UK tend to concentrate their holdings in relatively few properties; as a consequence they are vulnerable to significant risk of underperforming the overall market or a target rate of return....

[abstract missing - contribution appeared in the programme]

A stylized fact in the real estate diversification literature is that sector (property type) effects are relatively more important than regional (geographical) factors in determining property returns. Thus, for those portfolio managers who follow a top‐down approach to portfolio management,...