The collapse of the subprime market has hit hedge funds hard. According to Anthony Sanders, professor of finance and real estate at the W. P. Carey School of Business, many hedge funds forgot due diligence when the real estate market was hottest, and are now stuck with bad paper.

"In real estate, if you keep yourself in front of long-term demographic trends, you will prosper," observes Christopher Cole, founder and chief executive of the Cole Companies, who received the Distinguished Achievement Award at the W. P. Carey undergraduate convocation recently.

CEOs' home purchases, stock sales and subsequent company performance management

Phoenix, now the fifth largest city in the United States, could be the poster child for metropolitan areas where a bursting residential housing bubble has created economic discord.

Since the turn of the millennium, real estate has become one of the fastest growing investment sectors, not just in the United States but globally as well. But as much as we would like to think otherwise, there's considerable risk involved in real estate investing.

Picture the U.S.

For the first time in three years, the ASU-RSI (Repeat Sales Index) is showing an increase in residential prices: preliminary data for March show that year-over-year, prices for homes in the lower-price and foreclosure segments in Phoenix turned positive.

Housing prices in Phoenix continued their downward march in September, extending a record string of declines that started 19 months ago. Home prices fell 28 percent this September compared with the same month last year, according to the Arizona State University-Repeat Sales Index (ASU-RSI).

Activity in the Phoenix real estate market dropped between June and July, during the summer season when sales are usually up. The reason is that foreclosure-related activity fell once again — dropping below 30 percent for the first time since 2009.