Friday Letter Next stop where?

The main message from PERE’s second European Private Equity Real Estate Forum held in London in early June: Work very hard if you want to carry on making money in this asset class. The first half of the current decade will undoubtedly be remembered as a golden age of property investing, but will a 12 percent net annual return on an unlevered basis remain as readily available as it has been? Hardly, warned Matthew Ryall, a member of real estate research and strategy at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers in London who sat on the Forum’s concluding panel. Without active (and clever) asset management, performance will prove elusive.