Empirical Risk-Return Analysis of Real Estate Investments in the U.S., 1972–1999

Abstract

This article reviews empirical risk and return statistics from physical real estate and financial real estate investments made in the U.S. Twenty-seven years of returns from various categories of U.S. real estate are compared and contrasted with concurrent U.S. returns from bonds, gold, silver, common stocks, commodities, and the rate of inflation.