As investors fret about the short-term effects of rising inflationary pressures, long-term decision makers about commercial real estate holdings would be wise to look at demographics and macro behavioral patterns, according to one industry source.

"When you consider investing over 20 years, you can look past a lot of the noise that gets in the way," says John Chang, senior vice president and director of research services at Marcus & Millichap. He points to several pertinent examples, hearkening back, for example, to investor behavior 15 years ago, when apartment bidders aggressively pushed up prices in 2006 and 2007 before the Great Financial Crisis.

Many investors arguably overpaid for the assets, he says, but average apartment rents have increased by 75% since then and prices are now 135% higher than pre-GFC levels. And from 2000 to 2021, according to Marcus & Millichap, S&P Global and NCREIF data, the total return from the S&P was 416%. Apartments outpaced that performance at 458% and retail delivered a 461% return. Industrial more than doubled the S&P with a total return of 848%. Office real estate was ahead of the S&P until the pandemic began, but office properties still delivered a total return of 341%.