What really matters in the real estate business is location.

And timing.

And discipline.

That is the three-pronged conclusion of a new investment strategy advisory from TIAA-CREF.

Let’s start with location. The report is not talking about central business district versus suburban locations. Rather, the propensity of certain cities — such as Atlanta, Phoenix and even Chicago — to create real estate bubbles because of their tendency to allow supply to outstrip demand.

Why? Martha Peyton, the report’s co-author, points to a lack of geographic constraints, in some cases, or municipal land-use policies that make building permits easy to come by.

“We avoid those markets,” Peyton flatly remarks.

Meanwhile, cities such as Boston, New York and San Francisco are less likely to overbuild, sometimes because of geographic constraints