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The significance of publicy listed property companies for German Real Estate Markets

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Aggregated portfolio data for the publicly listed sector have been unavailable to date. The German  Property Federation (ZIA), Barkow Consulting (BC) and Akselrod Consulting (AC) have now  assessed these for the first time. The analysis is intended to provide a more transparent picture of the listed real estate space and highlight the sector’s importance by means of comparison with other  common classes of German indirect real estate vehicles.

Historically, listed sector market capitalisation has been employed for these types of comparisons.  Evaluations of this kind have proven problematic however, as German closed and open-end real  estate funds have typically been compared on the basis of gross asset value. Past analyses have  therefore significantly understated the size of the listed space versus other indirect investment vehicles.

Based on our analysis, publicly listed real estate companies own EUR 67.6 BN of German real estate, of which EUR 59.1 BN is owned by German listed real estate companies. Notably, a  drill-down by property type shows that German open-end funds own almost 2.5x as much office real estate as the listed real estate companies, making open-end funds the more important player in office investment markets.

Since year-end 2008, German public real estate market cap has risen 213%, based on the DIMAX Index’s current EUR 22.9 BN value (an absolute increase of EUR 15.6 BN). The gain was driven on one hand by positive share price performance (+71% since year-end 2008, according to DIMAX). On the other hand, issuance of equity capital through IPOs and capital increases drove incremental sector growth. As such, EUR 7.7 BN of new equity has been placed through the stock market since beginning of 2009.

Source : ZIA