You know that something’s not quite right when you walk into a room of real estate investors and fund managers and they’re talking vehemently about risk. That’s what happened at the last meeting of The Letter – Europe’s editorial board, held in mid-September 2010 at the Grand Hotel des Iles Borromées in Stresa, Italy. Not only that, but they were still talking about risk a day later.

The reason why risk is so high up the consciousness curve — which makes a change from talk of going up the risk curve to get the returns from real estate that you want and need — isn’t hard to find. Downturns hurt, and investors are still unhappy with the losses that they’ve incurred on real estate investments since the global financial crisis hit, finally, in autumn 2008, and fund managers are still attempting to placate them.

Investors are not just unhappy about the losses, they’re also unhappy about the reasons for the losses and t