Distress has frustrated investors in this latest round of disruption. Now Real Capital Analytics is offering a new way of looking at this conundrum and how distressed investors can win in this seemingly distress-free environment.

The answer, according to RCA, is through the repositioning of assets without good income prospects: preliminary data from the firm shows that 12% of distressed assets purchased so far this year were acquired with the intent to redevelop—double the amount of non-distressed sales set to be redeveloped over the same period. 

RCA analysts caution against relying on strategies from the Great Financial Crisis to weather the current storm, noting that the drivers of this downtown are "fundamentally different" from the last. During the last recession, distressed investing focused on investors stepping in to rebalance capital for cash-flowing assets that had too much debt relative to income. In fact, institutional capital accounted for 40% of US distressed purchases between 2010 and 2012, at the height of the GFC, and equity funds were behind a quarter of all distressed purchases during that time period. And in turn, those capital sources reaped big gains.