It’s like clockwork. Every few years, a news story comes along announcing the incipient burgeoning of the real estate secondary market. And while the real estate secondary market has increased in size, it has yet to fulfill the promise of really taking off — this time, though, things might be different.

A comparison of the real estate secondary market with the private equity secondary market (which has grown from $2 billion of annual transaction volume in 2001 to $13 billion in 2007) suggests real estate may be positioned to follow in the exponential footsteps of the private equity secondary market. By contrast, Landmark Partners, which specializes in buying secondary interests in real estate and private equity funds, estimates that a total of $5 billion of real estate secondaries have traded over the life of the industry. That is set to grow in the next couple years. Landmark predicts transactions in the real estate secondary market during the next 12 months could exceed