Message from the CEO

This year started with a milestone for our Public Affairs programme as we hosted an event at the European Parliament for MEPs to put forward the case for real estate as a long term investment. While sounding simple, such an event is only possible after years of groundwork to establish a network within Brussels and build up confidence within the institution that we can make a meaningful contribution to the debate.

I’m proud to say that we have got to this stage within three years of beginning our public affairs programme with an active office in Brussels being overseen by our Director Jeff Rupp. The event shows we are making real progress in representing the views of our members as the regulatory agenda remains an important priority for our industry.

The next milestone for us this year will be the launch of the INREV Guidelines on Tuesday 8 April at the Investor Only and Fund Manager Seminars in Berlin as part of the Annual Conference. Besides the need to have guidelines which reflect best practices in a post-crisis environment, there are two important ideas behind the revision.

First, the Guidelines will be transformed from their fund lifecycle format in a modular approach. This is a big change but we will ensure we provide training to make this transition easy for members. The second is that we will continue to work to align the Guidelines to relevant standards in other regions to allow for an easy transition between approaches for members. After much hard work from our members and consultation with the market, we are confident the revised Guidelines will meet the needs of the industry going forward.

The Annual Conference also brings the usual opportunity for members to feed back to us on a formal basis through the Annual General Meeting. Of course, we are happy to hear your views and receive member feedback all year round but we take transparency through our governance process very seriously and encourage members to attend and participate.

With just six weeks to go, the agenda for the conference is shaping up well with the overall theme of “real estate coming back to life”. We will be launching a new piece of research at the conference looking at the benefits of non-listed property funds. After a few years of being less high up on the agenda of some investors, this is a subject that we are looking forward to revisiting as we enter a new phase of the cycle.

Matthias Thomas, INREV CEO