INTREAL Fund Commentary: Net Fund Assets of Institutional Open-Ended Real Estate Funds Decrease by c. 3.9 Billion Euros in 2024

11. Mar 2025

The net fund assets of all institutional real estate funds decreased in 2024, according to figures released by Deutsche Bundesbank. Compared to 182.2 billion euros by year-end 2023, the total recorded on 31 December 2024 was down to 178.3 billion euros. This implies a decline by 2.1 percent or 3.9 billion euros.

Camille Dufieux, Managing Director of INTREAL, commented: “This is a new trend, because the total net fund assets across all funds kept seeing substantial growth over the past years, including in 2023. For the sake of comparison: Fund asset growth in 2023 amounted to around 5.0 percent year on year, while in 2022, it was actually at about 12.5 percent still. The drop in 2024 is attributable primarily to asset value markdowns.

Meanwhile, the net cash inflow followed a converse trend compared to the net fund assets. In sum, the institutional real estate funds registered a net cash inflow of c. 7.4 billion euros in 2024. Analogously, the number of funds continued to increase. To be exact, the statistics showed a total of 684 funds by the end of 2024, meaning 13 vehicles more than the previous year-end total (31 December 2023: 671 funds).

Dufieux commented the situation: “The picture is therefore ambivalent. On the one hand, there are an extra 13 funds, on balance, and a clearly positive cash inflow. On the other hand, funds suffered markdowns for the first time in years. What we are seeing here is that the performance of real estate values in these funds trails the development in the real estate market at a certain temporal delay. The positive trend in cash inflows and in the number of funds matches our own observations. Taking a cautiously optimistic view of 2025, we expect INTREAL and its fund partners to launch between three and five new institutional open-ended real estate funds over the course of the year.”

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