LONDON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - FTSE Group has joined forces with real estate industry bodies EPRA and NAREIT to launch 12 new real-time indexes enabling investors to gauge relative performance of listed property stocks in emerging markets.
The FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Emerging Markets indexes will track 70 publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and listed property companies from 13 emerging markets worldwide, including Brazil, China, India, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand and Turkey.
The Emerging Market indexes will join existing indexes covering developed markets to form an expanded FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Global Real Estate Index Series.
The launch of the new indexes comes amid continued interest in nascent property markets from investors keen to diversify their holdings and offset falling values of assets in mature property markets like Europe and the United States.
"Our aim in creating and developing the FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Global Real Estate Index Series has been to make the full opportunity set of global real estate investment readily available through the efficient, liquid and transparent medium of publicly traded securities," said Steven Wechsler, president of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT).
"Our new Emerging Markets indices are an important milestone in that ongoing effort," he added.
Plans to launch a new suite of indexes covering many of the world's fastest growing property markets were first revealed in a Reuters report from the European Public Real Estate Association (EPRA) annual conference in Sweden in September..
"The global real estate marketplace has grown significantly in both size and diversity over the past few years. At the same time, investors are increasingly expressing interest in accessing emerging markets," said Ronnee Ades, head of alternatives, at the FTSE Group. (Reporting by Sinead Cruise; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter) (See www.reutersrealestate.com for the global service for real estate professionals from Reuters)