Commercial landlords may be looking differently at the mix of lease horizons in their buildings and across their portfolios than they did a few weeks ago.

Multifamily assets delivered the lowest income return of the property sectors to institutional investors in the Canada Property Index last year, but produced strong total returns on a foundation of 7.3 per cent capital growth.

A new package of analytical tools identify and track asset exposure to climate risk, aligned with the steady adoption of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures by global financial institutions.

A 6.65 per cent average total return on the Canada Property Index's 2,723 directly held standing assets, scattered across eight major markets, cloaks significant variances between property sectors and from market to market.

A widening scope of resources can be tapped to build increasingly sophisticated risk profiles, but sustainability practitioners note that data is often fragmented and difficult to obtain.

Multifamily assets have enjoyed the most growth in real estate portfolio share of any property type thus far in the 21st century, jumping from 11 per cent to 17 per cent of investment allocation.

Transaction data from 2018 direct sales does not validate grumbling about the dissonance between REIT pricing and the appraised values of retail properties.

The 2018 total return on Canadian real estate assets was in the back half of the pack among 25 national markets, but Canada is part of a smaller group of 12 that can boast an improvement over 2017 results.

Recent MSCI analysis suggests outsiders can suffer a more painful hit or enjoy a better recovery from a geopolitical shock, depending on their timing and the strength of their domestic currency.

A surging industrial sector helped to counterbalance slipping retail values and push up 2018 investment returns on Canadian commercial real estate.

Residential was the only sector that could boast capital growth in every market where institutional investors represented in the Canada Property Index hold properties.

Since only publicly traded entities are part of the analysis, many of Canada's largest real estate players are excluded. However, other criteria to qualify would eliminate several of them anyway.

Annual results of the REALPAC/IPD Canada Quarterly Property Index, released late last week, reveal a year of below-average performance for index participants' directly held standing assets.

The reclassification from an industry group within the financials sector formally occurs on September 1, and will also introduce a new term for real estate investment trusts (REITs), which will become known as Equity REITs.

A new standardized approach for collecting, measuring and interpreting real estate investment performance data responds to the ever widening scope of global portfolios and institutional investors' need for transparency and cross-border consistency.