What seems to be best data practices can become a way to get stuck in the mud. They can become comfortable and an automatic choice, getting reinforced through how software vendors typically handle data.

A recent article by MSCI Research Executive Director Bryan Reid, Senior Associate Fritz Louw, and Executive Director Will Robson in The Journal of Portfolio Management looked at how the usual combination of property type and geographic location can be useful and yet remain limited in how they can identify and explain performance variation.

"For many real estate investors, property-type and geography segmentations are the primary lens through which they measure and manage their portfolios," the authors wrote. "Whether it is defining allocations, constructing benchmarks, attributing performance, forecasting or modeling risk, segmentations built on property type and geographical classifications play an important role.