A real estate crash typically takes months or years giving you time to think, strategize and react.It's true that the stock market historically has more volatility but as many have learned when the real estate market crashes some times you can't get out in time.What is fundamentally true with any asset market is those who try to time them get burned.

However, despite Texas' propensity for cyclical extremes, evidence suggests its real estate markets may now be less volatile than in the past.

Their specialty is managing liquid assets and hedging the risk - not easy with the current volatility of real assets.

That can be a disaster: utility prices are volatile and tenants waste utilities when they don't pay for them.

Practically, I can make a solid case that condo rents are not in perpetuity (more volatile than say, C Class apartment rents) as they require some level of negative cash flow (repairs) to maintain the rent-level. 

More speculative markets like Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and even Canada tend to be far more volatile.

Volatility numbers seem to bear this out.

Except in very volatile markets, you should have some idea the direction things are taking over the next several months.

OR investing in high yield, low volatility property that is a little more crash-safe while you wait for the market to be more opportune for an appreciation play.

In other words, the volatility of a given market has more of an affect on cap rates than the actual performance of the asset itself.