9 funds recorded in this asset class, with redemption terms and ongoing costs from the PRIIPs KID. Straight to the fund list ↓
By Niko Hatziiosifidis · last reviewed 23 Aug 2026
Semi-liquid property funds — ELTIFs and evergreen structures — buy buildings whose value is not established daily on an exchange but appraised at fixed intervals by independent valuers; redemptions are therefore possible only on set dates, with notice periods and volume limits. German investors have known this principle for longer than any ELTIF has existed: German open-ended property funds under § 255 KAGB, with their 24-month minimum holding period and 12-month notice period, are the oldest semi-liquid structure on the market — born out of the fund closures of the 2008/09 financial crisis. Once you have understood the mechanics of appraisal-based valuation, a smoothed NAV and limited redemption, you can read both worlds — and compare their differences soberly.
5 of the 9 real-estate funds recorded redeem quarterly; the median ongoing cost ratio is 2.30% p.a.
n = 9 · cost median from 5 funds that disclose costs · calculated from our fund database · as at Aug 2026
Real estate funds buy buildings and projects — the return comes from two sources: the rent received and the change in value of the properties. Unlike with equities, no market sets a price every day: the value is estimated by valuers at fixed intervals. That smooths the curve, but it also means the reported NAV lags the real market — on the way up as well as on the way down. The distinctions are by risk level and by sector.
Fully let quality properties in good locations with long leases. The return comes mainly from rent — lowest risk.
Sound properties with some room for improvement — smaller refurbishments, renegotiating leases as they expire.
Properties with vacancy, refurbishment needs or potential for a change of use. The return comes mostly from the increase in value — more upside, more risk.
Project development and new build, with construction and letting risk. The return and risk profile is closer to private equity than to a conventional long-term owner.
Stable demand, regulated rents, a granular tenant base — the most defensive sector, and in Germany subject to close political attention.
Warehouses and distribution centres — driven by online retail and the restructuring of supply chains. Long the standout growth sector.
The classic sectors — and the ones with the greatest structural change: home working and e-commerce have dramatically widened the gaps in location and quality.
Specialist real estate with a demand logic of its own: data centres (digitalisation), care and healthcare property (demographics), hotels (the economic cycle).
When you hear “property fund” in Germany, you probably think of open-ended retail property funds — hausInvest, UniImmo & Co. That is the best way into this chapter, because structurally these funds are nothing other than first-generation semi-liquid vehicles: they hold illiquid buildings but issue units valued on every trading day, and they limit redemption through notice periods rather than through gates. The rules are set out in § 255 KAGB: units may be redeemed only after a minimum holding period of 24 months, and redemption must be declared irrevocably 12 months in advance (§ 255 KAGB). These periods are not the invention of cautious providers but statute — and a direct answer to 2008/09, when daily redemption turned into a design flaw (more on that below).
An ELTIF or evergreen fund solves the same basic problem — illiquid buildings, investors who want out — with different tools: instead of one fixed statutory period for everyone, it combines, depending on the product, redemption dates (often monthly or quarterly), notice periods (from zero to twelve months), a liquidity buffer and above all gates — per centage caps per date, typically 2–5% of fund assets (see the gating chapter). The practical difference: with an open-ended property fund you know your earliest exit date to the day, but you then normally receive the full amount; with a semi-liquid vehicle you can formally get out more often, but whether your order is executed in full depends on how many others want to leave at the same time. One system spreads the waiting time predictably across everyone, the other flexibly according to the rush for the door. Neither is “better” — they merely shift who bears which risk, and when. Third difference: the content. German open-ended property funds are almost without exception core vehicles with a statutory cap on borrowing (maximum 30% loan-to-value, § 254 KAGB); semi-liquid private-markets funds cover the full range up to value-add and development — with a correspondingly different risk and fee profile. And fourth, valuation: for the open-ended property fund the KAGB prescribes independent external valuers, rotation and regular valuation; for ELTIFs the AIFMD/ELTIF rules require the valuation function to be independent but leave more latitude in the method (see Valuation & NAV).
The NAV of a property fund is the sum of appraised values, not of market prices. Valuers determine — in Germany using the income capitalisation approach, internationally under the RICS “Red Book” — what a building ought to fetch in an orderly sales process. For that they need transaction evidence: actual sales of comparable properties. That is exactly what is missing in stressed markets, because hardly anyone sells — the appraisals then have no choice but to roll forward old comparables. The result is the familiar smoothing: the NAV follows the market with a lag and a dampened swing, downwards as well as upwards. In the research literature this is called “appraisal smoothing” and has been well documented since David Geltner’s work in the early 1990s.
How wide that gap can get was there for anyone to see in 2022 who laid two return figures side by side: listed US REITs lost −24.9% in 2022 (FTSE Nareit All Equity REITs) — the largest unlisted US property fund, Blackstone’s BREIT, reported +8.4% for the same year (share class I, net). More than 33 per centage points of difference for the same asset class in the same year. Part of that is real (a different portfolio, plenty of residential and logistics in the Sunbelt), a substantial part is valuation methodology — the stock market prices expectations immediately, the appraisal waits for evidence. The following years supplied the counter-check: in 2023 BREIT reported −0.5%, while listed REITs were already recovering. Both curves describe the same market, only offset in time. For you that means: a stable NAV in falling markets is first of all a statement about the valuation mechanics, not about the stability of value. German investors have had an object lesson in their own market since 2024: the open-ended residential fund UniImmo Wohnen ZBI was written down by 16.7% at the end of June 2024 after a special valuation — the share price fell from €50.74 to €42.26, in a single day (Union Investment, June 2024). Not because the buildings got worse overnight, but because the valuation caught up with reality in a single step. There is, incidentally, a running reality check in Germany too: units of many open-ended property funds are traded on the stock exchange — in 2023 at times at discounts of up to 15% to the official redemption price (DAS INVESTMENT, 2023). That exchange price, like the secondary-market discount on evergreens, is often the more honest stress indicator than the NAV.
2008/09, Germany. Open-ended property funds back then effectively offered daily redemption on an illiquid portfolio. When institutional investors pulled liquidity out en masse during the financial crisis, one fund after another had to suspend redemption. The end of the story, soberly totted up by the rating agency Scope: 18 funds with around €26 billion in assets were closed and wound up; over roughly nine years, the outcomes for investors ranged from +0.8% to −54.8%, averaging about −22% (Scope via immobilienmanager, 2018). The legislator’s answer was today’s periods under § 255 KAGB — minimum holding period and notice period replace the promise of daily liquidity that was never tenable.
2016/2019, the United Kingdom. The parallel case under a different rulebook: British open-ended property funds kept daily redemption — and within days of the Brexit referendum six large funds holding around £14.6 billion froze; a seventh closed briefly (FCA, DP17/1). In 2019 came the suspension of the M&G Property Portfolio (17 months, until May 2021), and in 2020 the sector stood practically still because of “material valuation uncertainty”. In October 2023 M&G announced the wind-up of its once multi-billion fund — with a volume down to around £565 million by then. The lesson is the same as in Germany, just drawn a decade later: daily liquidity and property do not go together.
2022–2026, the United States and Europe. The semi-liquid generation was put to the test from the end of 2022. From November 2022 BREIT pulled its gate (2% of NAV per month, 5% per quarter) and met redemptions only pro rata for 15 months; not until February 2024 was 100% of a month’s requests paid out again — cumulatively more than US$15 billion flowed out (see the gating chapter). Its competitor Starwood SREIT tightened its gate in May 2024 (from 2%/month and 5%/quarter to 0.33%/month and 1%/quarter) and finally suspended redemption largely as at 30 April 2026 — nothing has changed there to this day (as at Aug 2026). In parallel, the turn in interest rates was working its way through the appraisals in Europe: the INREV index for European core funds (European ODCE) recorded its second-weakest quarter since inception in the fourth quarter of 2023, at −4.28% (INREV), Munich offices lost around 27% of their value between mid-2022 and mid-2024 according to MSCI, and the European office vacancy rate rose to 8.5% by Q3 2024 — the highest level since 2015, with prime rents for modern space climbing sharply at the same time (JLL). German open-ended property funds lost more than €11 billion in net flows over the same phase; in July 2025 alone €889 million flowed out — the weakest month since 2008 (Barkow Consulting). The difference from 2008: the notice periods and gates largely held. The heavyweights stayed open — it was not until June 2026 that KanAm Leading Cities Invest (around €350 million) became the first retail fund of the current outflow wave to go into wind-up. The mechanics worked as described in the prospectus — only exactly as described, not as some had imagined them.
Price in the valuation cycle. Appraisal valuations follow interest-rate moves with a lag that can run to several quarters — the adjustment rounds of 2022–2024 showed that clearly. The NAV is a smoothed figure; buying in and selling out at the “old” NAV can favour or penalise investors on either side.
Leverage (LTV) is the risk lever. A moderate fall in the value of the properties feeds through the debt lever into the NAV disproportionately. Look at LTV at property and fund level together, and at fixed-rate periods and refinancing dates.
A distribution is not the same as a return. Some vehicles keep paying stable distributions even though the NAV is falling — part of the distribution then comes out of capital. Always read the distribution yield alongside the NAV; our detail pages show both one above the other.
The metrics that keep the NAV grounded. The net initial yield (net rental income ÷ purchase price including acquisition costs) is the central bridge between valuation and market: if the valuation yield assumed in the appraisal is clearly below the initial yields of current transactions, the portfolio is arithmetically still valued too richly — the write-down is then a question of time. Exactly that gap built up across Europe in 2022–2024 and has closed step by step. The LTV (loan-to-value) translates property losses into NAV losses: at 40% LTV, −10% on the property value becomes roughly −17% on the equity value; check it at property and fund level, along with interest rate fixing and refinancing maturities. The WAULT (weighted average unexpired lease term) measures how long the rental income is contractually secured. Always read the vacancy rate together with the quality of the space: 8.5% average vacancy alongside record rental growth for prime space (JLL, Q3 2024) means that the average barely describes any real building any more. And the capex requirement (maintenance, energy-efficiency refurbishment) is the quietest metric of them all: it rarely features prominently on the factsheet, yet it decides how much of the gross rent reaches the investor — according to Scope, the write-down of UniImmo Wohnen ZBI was due chiefly to the portfolio having been built up in the high-price phase, the low share of newer buildings and a below-average occupancy rate.
Common misreadings: a stable NAV ≠ stable value (it can simply mean that the transaction evidence is missing); distribution yield ≠ income (distributions can flow out of substance); volatility taken from NAV time series systematically understates risk (smoothing); and the comparison “ELTIF return vs open-ended property fund return” over 2022–2024 compares valuation speeds above all, not management performance. Questions for the manager: who values — externally, on what rotation, how often? How does the valuation yield stand against current market initial yields? LTV, floating-rate debt, maturities over the next 24 months? WAULT and largest tenants? Planned capex over five years? Execution rate at the last redemption dates? References: Geltner (1991) on appraisal smoothing; the RICS “Red Book”; INREV indices as the European basis for comparison.
An ELTIF (European Long-Term Investment Fund) with a property focus is an EU-regulated fund vehicle that gives retail investors access to directly held real estate or to property target funds. Unlike the German open-ended property fund, there are no uniform statutory holding and notice periods — every ELTIF defines its redemption dates, notice periods and gates itself in the prospectus.
Both hold illiquid property and limit redemption — but with different tools. The open-ended property fund works with statutorily fixed periods (24-month minimum holding period, 12-month notice period) and is typically a core product with limited borrowing. ELTIFs and evergreens work with redemption dates plus gates (usually 2–5% per date), also cover riskier strategies and differ widely among themselves. There is no blanket “better”.
For German open-ended property funds, 12 months by law, and on top of that a minimum holding period of 24 months applies (§ 255 KAGB). For semi-liquid funds (ELTIF/evergreen) the range runs from zero to twelve months depending on the product — plus the possibility that redemptions are cut back at the gate.
Yes — suspension of redemption is the last tool of every open-ended property structure in stressed markets, as documented in Germany (2008/09), the United Kingdom (2016, 2019/20) and most recently at US vehicles (Starwood SREIT, since April 2026). Today’s notice periods and gates are meant to make exactly that less likely; rule it out they cannot.
Because the NAV rests on appraisals, which need transaction evidence and therefore lag the market — sometimes by quarters. In 2022 listed US REITs lost around 25%, while the largest private US property fund reported +8.4%; the adjustment came later. A stable NAV in falling markets says something about the valuation mechanics first, not about the real value.
“Safer” conflates two levels. The liquidity rules of the open-ended property fund are stricter and more predictable; portfolio risk, by contrast, depends on strategy (core through to opportunistic), borrowing and sectors — and there are cautious and aggressive products in both worlds. Always compare the two levels separately: redemption mechanics and portfolio.
Last reviewed: 23 Aug 2026 · Methodology · Not investment advice.
Redemption terms and ongoing costs from the PRIIPs KID · click a fund name to open its detail view. Filter and sort interactively →
| Fund | Provider | Redemption | Ongoing costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amundi Realti | Amundi | none | 1.63% |
| Blackstone European Property Income Fund | Blackstone | monthly | 1.3% |
| Greenman NEXT ELTIF | Greenman Investments | quarterly | 2.5% |
| Greenman OPEN ELTIF | Greenman Investments | quarterly | – |
| LeanVal Private Debt Fonds | LeanVal Asset Management AG, Frankfurt am Main | quarterly | 2.5% |
| Licus ELTIF - Real Estate Bridge Invest | Pegasus Vermögensmanagement GmbH | quarterly | 2.3% |
| Nuveen Luxembourg UCI II SICAV S.A. - Global Cities | Nuveen Real Estate | – | |
| Schroders Capital Semi-Liquid Global Real Estate Total Return | Schroders Capital | quarterly | – |
| UBS (Lux) Real Estate Funds Selection - Global | UBS Asset Management | monthly | – |