Income and Cap Rate Effects on Property Appreciation

Abstract

The strong performance of real estate and other private market asset classes in the past several years has attracted considerable interest to alternative investments. While the evidence demonstrates that property and capital market forces drive real estate pricing and thus investment performance, measuring the contribution of these two forces is challenging. Examination of the historical relationship between real estate property market forces (which drive property earnings) and capital market forces (which largely determine cap rates) helps investors better understand the effect of the two forces on property values in the past and how changes in either might affect property values in the future.