This textbook, aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate real estate programmes, provides an overview of real estate investment and pricing in a global context with special attention to the diversification of asset types in three parts. Designed as a successor to Will Fraser’s successful student-led investment book, Principles of Property Investment and Pricing, it encompasses the microeconomics of real estate markets and context alongside pricing failures of real estate highlighted by the impact of the global financial crisis, especially with regard to irrationality and risk.

Part 1 focuses on the microeconomics of the real estate sector, covering the complex nature of real estate and the consequences for economic analysis and the operation of the market, the underlying essential processes and principles of real estate investment decision making, including a pricing model, and the significance of real estate cycles and why they occur. Part 2 begins with the characteristics of real estate as an investment, differentiated between direct and indirect investment, and making comparisons with alternative stock market assets, then examines real estate investors and their objectives, including financial institutions, REITs and other indirect vehicles. Additionally, it sets out the frameworks within which real estate investment decisions are made in relation to other investments and focuses on decision-making processes and the practicalities of performance measurement. Emerging real estate debates are discussed in Part 3. These chapters are primarily forward-looking to the implications and challenges for real estate investment, including the consequences of recent aspects of regulation, changes to occupier demand, partly driven by technology but also sustainability pressures, the logic and difficulties of international investment, with a particular focus on emerging markets.