Building The Ultimate Real Estate Investment Portfolio

Interview with: Russell Chaplin, Global Real Estate Strategist, UBS Global Asset Management

The crisis is challenging for even the most experienced real estate investors. Russell Chaplin, a speaker at the marcus evans European Real Estate and Investments Summit 2009 addresses the most critical issues troubling real estate investment officers in Europe today.


Monte-Carlo, Monaco, November 11, 2009 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The global economic turbulence has thrown many institutional investors into disarray. What they initially considered smart investing or lucrative assets, fell short of expected performance. Many are taking this period to reflect on previous investment strategies and portfolios. Russell Chaplin, a speaker at the marcus evans European Real Estate and Investments Summit 2009 taking place in Monaco, 23 - 25 November, shares his thoughts on the challenges real estate investment officers are currently faced with, the opportunities that have been created by the crisis and his outlook for 2010.

What are the challenges real estate investors are faced with in Europe at the moment, and what can be done to overcome them?

Russell Chaplin: A key challenge in Europe at the moment is the appropriate pricing of risk in the markets, because various markets across Europe have fallen in value at different speeds and it is not wholly clear how far through the overall downturn we are. So, for investors looking to step into the European markets, at the moment, it is a question of appropriately pricing the risks that they are taking and assessing those accurately. That is one of the key issues. Another key issue would be the general availability of debt to be used for real estate acquisitions, which is far lower than it was two or three years ago, and the margins related to that debt are far higher. Whilst there is some debt available, it is only available for certain types of assets and I think that causes issues for investors, particularly those seeking higher risk return objectives.

What opportunities has the global crisis created? Currently, what are the lucrative investment opportunities in the market for investment officers?

Russell Chaplin: One of the opportunities is related to the debt market; because the debt market has been functioning so poorly over the last two years, one opportunity that has arisen is for what would be traditional equity investors to turn into debt investors and begin to finance property investments in the absence of the availability of bank debt. Secondly, because there has been a general lack of transaction evidence in this period, there is a lot of uncertainty about appropriate pricing. For those who are equity rich at the moment, given the decreased availability of debt, 2009 and 2010 probably represent an excellent opportunity to deploy capital.

To view the complete press release, please visit http://www.me-uk.com/summit/newsletter.asp?eventid=15294&RecID=1437