For years, NCREIF has been publishing real estate returns for four property
types in eight fairly broadly defined regions of the country. NCREIF also
summarizes returns by property type at the national level. These national e
stimates are generally the data used in returns forecasting. Little use is
made of the regional data, at least in terms of future outlook rather than
past performance. In this article the authors discuss the return models the
y created and their forecasts for the office markets in the eight NCREIF re
gions. Their results show that these models can offer some interesting conc
lusions about the differences among, and similarities across, real estate m
arkets.