Misperceptions and the dominance of real estate in pension portfolios: experimental evidence

In many countries, real estate assets dominate household wealth and retirement portfolios, yet the drivers of this remain debated. While existing literature emphasizes preferences and institutional factors, less is known about the role of misperceptions regarding asset characteristics. This paper examines whether inaccurate beliefs about the relative risk, return, and liquidity of real estate versus financial securities contribute to the overweighting of housing in retirement-age savings. We conducted a controlled experiment in which participants were randomly assigned to receive structured comparative information about asset characteristics. The results show that correcting misperceptions leads to a significant shift in portfolio preferences towards financial securities and away from real estate. These findings suggest that informational frictions play an important role in shaping the composition of household wealth, and highlight the potential of transparency-enhancing interventions to improve long-term investment decisions.