International equity exposure can provide diversification benefits for investors. Unless your broker offers direct access to European or US markets unlike Australian Real Estate Investments Trusts, there are really no options for Australian investors to gain equity exposure to European REITs.
There are no listed index funds Australian investors can buy which invest in European REITs. The only real estate investment trust which has exposure to Europe is Unibal-Rodemco-Westfield. For those with access to US markets there are indirect options via REIT ETFs listed in the US markets.
One of these is Blackrock’s iShares Europe Developed Real Estate ETF which is benchmarked against the European REIT index, FTSE EPRA Nareit Developed Europe Index.
This European REIT ETF tracks listed REITs listed in the developed markets.
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List of European REITs
This is a searchable list of REITs across all of the major markets sorted by market capitalization.
- REITs can be selected by country
- List can narrow down REITs above certain size. The default is $500 Mil minimum. If the field is set to zero, all of the listed REITs in Europe will be listed.
- Listed can be sorted within set P/E ranges
The data for REITs listed in Spain, Italy, Sweden, Netherlands and Norway are currently unavailable.
Geographic Exposure
- Germany and UK make up more than half of the fund with France and Sweden following behind
- No exposure to the European emerging markets such as Turkey, central Europe countries or Russia.
Sector Exposure
One important point to note on this European REIT ETF is almost half of the fund are made of up Real Estate Operation Companies. These are real estate developers which takes on a more active in the real estate investment space verses the passive income focus of traditional real estate investment trusts.