University endowment funds have a key role in providing opportunities for universities beyond their normal budgets (eg: student scholarships etc). In many cases, these university endowment funds are significant pools of assets; eg: Harvard ($39B), Yale ($30B), Stanford ($28B) and Princeton ($26B) in the US and Oxford (£7B) and Cambridge (£6B) in the UK; often seeing separate investment management organizations established to manage these assets. The significance of these university endowment funds to university operations highlights the importance of the portfolio asset mix of these endowment fund portfolios. This sees real estate as a key asset in many university endowment fund portfolios. This paper examines the role of real estate in the portfolios of university endowment funds in the US, UK and Asia. A range of critical issues are assessed for these university endowment fund portfolios, including the level of real estate, real estate strategies used, real estate vehicles used, dynamics and risk management procedures used to achieve this real estate exposure. The ongoing strategic issues for real estate in university endowment fund portfolios are also highlighted.