EPRA launches a Developers Research Benchmark

On January 12, 2022, EPRA launched the EPRA Developers Research Benchmark, a non-commercial benchmark designed to allow its constituents to assess themselves against each other.

Over the past decade, the European listed real estate developers’ sector has professionalised and has become a significant actor in the listed real estate universe.

Investors are seeking to increase their exposure to this sector, which benefits from structurally supportive fundamentals. Meanwhile, an increasing number of REITs and listed real estate companies are boosting their property development activities across the commercial real estate segment.

As of today, no benchmark is covering this sector, and residential developers are not eligible to the FTSE EPRA Nareit Europe indices. Therefore EPRA initiated the creation of a Developers Research Benchmark.

The EPRA Developers Research Benchmark is initially comprised of 29 constituents from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK, with a total free float market cap of EUR 59.6 billion (as of end of December 2021).

The threshold for inclusion in the EPRA Developers Research Benchmark is set at EUR 150 million in free float market cap. Further requirements such as the EBITDA, liquidity, reporting, geography and listing can be accessed here. The Benchmark will be computed on a monthly basis and reviewed twice a year: in April, with end of March data, and in October, with end of September data. Two additional minor benchmarks (sub-indexes) will be launched in parallel, one of them focusing on homebuilders and the other one covering developers with free float market cap of over EUR 500 million.

EPRA manages the Benchmark internally and will include a monthly high-level computation in its Monthly Market Review publication, available to all on the EPRA website (here). The underlying data can be requested from the EPRA team on-demand at research@epra.com.