At our recent VIP – Asia Investor Roundtable, held in Hong Kong on Nov. 19–20, 2013, Sameer Jain, chief economist and managing director for New York City–based American Realty Capital, helped facilitate a workshop on benchmarking and its applications in the Asia Pacific real estate markets.
The presentations spoke to the challenges associated with attempting to create benchmarks for any private market–related asset class such as real estate. Dr. Jain then gave a brief update on the NCREIF indices, the oldest and most accepted U.S. property market performance index series, along with an update on the primary benchmarks that are in the process of being introduced into the Asian markets. Following are highlights from that portion of his presentation.
The TR/GPR/APREA indices:
- Launched in the beginning of 2013 with Thomson Reuters, Global Property Research and the Asia Pacific Real Estate Association
- Primary mission: give Asia Pacific real estate securities markets greater visibility through the promulgation of a series of real estate securities–related performance indices
- Related mission: encourage the further development of REITs and REIT investment products in the Asia Pacific region
- Index variants:
- Country-specific indices
- REIT-only indices
- Price, income and total return performance measures
- U.S. dollar, euro, yen and other local currency–denominated data
- Two investable indices
- TR/GPR/APREA Investable 100
- TR/GPR/APREA Investable REIT 100
Other Asian property indices currently available in the market:
- FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Global Real Estate Index
- Global Real Estate Fund Index, sponsored by ANREV, INREV and NCREIF
- S&P Asia Property 40
- ANREV Fund Level Performance tool
- IPD indices
In addition, there are indices provided by various consultants and financial services firms. With the increasing number of benchmarks, investors will have an easier time measuring property performance in the Asia Pacific region.
Not a subscriber to IREI Insights blog? Sign up to receive alerts on new blog posts.
Geoffrey Dohrmann is president and CEO of Institutional Real Estate, Inc.
