At the half-way mark, students from Texas Christian University (TCU) are currently leading the Real Confidence University Portfolio Challenge, a year-long competition featuring teams from 15 universities seeking to create the best-performing portfolio from a mixture of real estate investments.
The TCU team posted a 19 percent return after two quarters, followed by the University of Chicago team’s 12.7 percent return and the University of San Diego group with a 10 percent return.
Under the terms of the challenge, each team chooses how it would allocate $1 billion to four quadrants of commercial real estate investment: public equity, private equity, public debt and private debt. The teams at TCU and the University of Chicago are invested entirely in REITs, whereas the University of San Diego team has an 80 percent allocation to REITs and 20 percent to private equity.
The best-performing portfolio in a four-quarter period will be declared the grand prize winner on July 30, 2016. The winning university will receive $50,000.
NAREIT has partnered in the challenge with the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) and Altus Group Ltd., a provider of independent advisory services.
(Contact: Mike Grupe at mgrupe@nareit.com)