Second, our findings contribute to an emerging discussion in the real estate literature on the choice of portfolio specialization. To date, existing work has focused primarily on geographic diversification (see . Hartzell, Sun and Titman (2010)). Our findings shed additional light on the importance of portfolio manager specialization in this industry. Finally, our work provides additional empirical support for the importance of financial intermediation in the gathering of specialized knowledge and efficiencies. REIT portfolio managers, who by definition specialize and concentrate solely on investment in the real estate market, appear to have much greater ability to select investments versus a benchmark of similar characteristics. Private portfolio managers, who.
