INREV German Vehicles Index: 10 years since launch
The INREV German Vehicles Index has reached an important milestone, marking the 10th anniversary of its launch and covering more than 25 years of data. Together with the German Vehicles Analysis Tool, it provides investors and industry professionals a clearer view of the trends shaping the performance of German domiciled vehicles, including detailed performance analysis for the Spezialfonds. Given the similarities between the legal structure and domicile of the funds, it could potentially be considered as a peer group. However, based on the different investment strategies, more granularity is required to have a proper like-for-like comparison. The good news is that this is available in the Analysis Tool.
A key tool for Spezialfonds peer group comparison
As of Q4 2025, the German Vehicles Index includes 202 vehicles and represents a total gross asset value (GAV) of €184.5 billion. Out of the 202 vehicles, the index includes 187 Spezialfonds representing 51% of the index by GAV. Although the Spezialfonds pursue different real estate strategies, they adhere to the same reporting standards, positioning the German Analysis Tools as a coherent and robust product for performance comparability analysis for both investors and managers.
The index shows that Spezialfonds have outperformed Publikumsfonds across multiple time horizons, particularly over the medium and long term. As of Q4 2025, Spezialfonds delivered higher annualised returns on a one-, five-, and ten-year basis. The only time horizon where Publikumsfonds outperformed Spezialfonds is the three year rolling return, reflecting the greater sensitivity of Spezialfonds performance to market cycles.
Source: INREV German Vehicles Index 2025 Q4
Breakdown of Spezialfonds performance
Sector performance has changed significantly over the past five years, with returns across sectors converging in recent periods. The spread between the one year rolling return of the best performing sector and the worst performing sector narrowed significantly from 1025 bps in Q4 2020 to 393 bps in Q4 2025.
At -1.16%, the Offices sector is the only Spezialfonds segment still reporting a negative one year rolling return in Q4 2025. By contrast, Spezialfonds focused on Residential outperformed the other main sectors in Q4 2025. Their one year rolling return stands at 2.77%.
Source: INREV German Vehicles Index 2025 Q4
Geographical trends in Spezialfonds performance
Spezialfonds performance by country has shown different patterns over the past five years compared with sector performance. The spread at country level has been significantly lower and has narrowed much less over the past five years. Specifically, the gap between the best and worst performing country strategies moved from 484 bps in Q4 2020 to 218 bps in Q4 2025.
After previously outperforming other geographical strategies, Spezialfonds investing in Germany are now underperforming, with a one year rolling return of 1.40%, the lowest among the main country strategies. In contrast, Spezialfonds targeting single countries other than Germany have been outperforming on a one year annualised basis since Q2 2024, with a one year rolling return of 3.58% in Q4 2025.
Source: INREV German Vehicles Index 2025 Q4
The German Vehicles Analysis Tool offers extensive filtering capabilities, allowing users to create multiple combinations based on country, region and sector. This flexibility enables investors and managers to tailor analyses to their specific investment focus and match strategies, facilitating more granular, relevant and actionable like-for-like performance comparisons. You can also read the full Q4 2025 report from the German Vehicles Index for more information.