Zell, who remained mostly mum on the topic, offered one comment: “It is an extraordinarily attractive portfolio of apartments. Obviously, Equity Residential has an interest. We have been involved in a process of sorts. I guess the other solution would be if someone gave me some K-Y. But let’s stick with the process.”

Zell, also the co-founder and chairman of Equity International, a private investment firm focused on real estate companies outside the US, has been active in bringing Equity International’s companies on the public markets. They are: Gafisa, a Brazil-based homebuilder; Xinyuan, a regional homebuilder in China; and Homex, a homebuilder in Mexico. A fourth, BR Malls, one of Brazil’s largest retail property owner and operators, is listed under the name Bovespa.

Previously, Zell served as chairman for Equity Office Properties Trust, which was sold in February 2007 to private equity giant the Blackstone Group for $39 billion, marking one of the largest private equity transactions of all time.

Much of the discussion at the national REIT conference, which attracted hundreds of industry leaders to the Pierre Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, focused on the state of mergers and acquisitions in the wake of consolidation and globalization, and whether REITs should diversify outside their specific property types.

With a firm focus on multifamily and residential assets, Zell urged the industry to stick with what they know instead of expanding their footprint into product “they know nothing” about. “Bigger just for the sake of bigness is obviously not the answer,” he said. “But bigger for the sake of maintaining and creating liquidity, I think, is critical. Bigger is better if you could figure out how to take advantage and execute your scale.”

He added, “If you are liquid, then price discovery is real. If you are not liquid or semi-not liquid, then there’s no way to really know whether the price discovery is real or not.”