Martin Whitman and Third Avenue Funds are among my favorite money managers. They are devoted to rooting out values the olde way and sticking with them: green eyeshades, ten key calculators, tire kickers. Nor are they ignorant of modern finance, being liquidation and ultra-deep value experts. These are not technical analysts and market timers, and that's why I've liked them for some of my money
On a total return basis Martin's fund, TAVFX has done as well as any one of the greats over the past ten to fifteen years of wild ups and downs, including another New York favorite of mine, Societe Generale's (now First Eagle's) Global Fund (SGENX).
The recent Third Avenue Annual Report has some of the best market-based discussions of real economics and real world regulation that you ever will see: in Martin Whitman's report (pages 6-12). Then further on in the report (pages 20-25) see Michael Winer's seminar with Martin and three of the giants of the securitized real estate market: Sam Zell, Milton Cooper, and Charles Ratner.
Bear in mind also that Whitman and Winer are now finding great conservative real estate values in pricey Hong Kong which Marc Faber and others are abandoning. A great read for "real" estate securities investors.
Also don't forget Alpine Funds' EGLRX if you have the, ah, yen for non US real estate securities in fund form.
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