In association with partners in a number of countries, Britain's main provider of real estate performance information has doubled its number of international projects over the past year. In addition to the established indices for Irish and Netherlands property, in 1998 Investment Property Databank (IPD) published the first performance results from its indices for real estate in Germany and Sweden.
Outside Europe, an index of South African property has also been launched.
Nor is this the end of the expansion. Plans for an index of French property in association with research organisation Base de Données des Investissements Immobiliers (BD2i) are well advanced and the first results are expected in the current year. The possibilities in other European countries are being investigated.
IPD's performance measurement is based on data from actual portfolios of institutionally held property investments (in the UK it reflects over £50bn of such real estate). The first figures from the new German index, for the calendar year 1997, were unexciting, with a total return of 3.9% reflecting an actual fall in capital values. But both Sweden and the Netherlands showed returns comfortably above 10% in 1997, while Ireland continued to power ahead with returns of over 25% - and the raging boom continued in 1998.