Glossary

MSCI Global Annual Property Index

Also known as: MSCI/IPD Index, MSCI Property Index, Global Annual Property Index, GAPI

A family of institutional-grade benchmarks, produced by MSCI (having acquired the former IPD indices), that measure the investment performance of directly held real estate across dozens of countries using standardized valuation-based methodology, enabling cross-border performance comparison and manager benchmarking.

Originally built by the UK's Investment Property Databank (IPD) before MSCI's acquisition, these indices are the closest international analogue to NCREIF's role in the U.S. market, but operate across many national markets simultaneously, each with its own local-currency index alongside global and regional aggregates, which is what allows an investor to benchmark, say, a German logistics portfolio's income and capital returns against the German market specifically or against a broader European or global composite. Like NCREIF, the underlying methodology is appraisal- or transaction-based rather than derived from listed securities prices, so the indices tend to smooth volatility relative to public real estate markets and lag turning points in the cycle — a limitation international investors must account for when using these benchmarks to assess whether a manager's reported performance reflects genuine outperformance or simply differences in valuation timing and methodology. Because contributing managers report in local currency, MSCI publishes both local-currency and, where relevant, currency-adjusted return series, making the index family a primary source for the local-currency-versus-home-currency decomposition that underpins most institutional performance attribution for international real estate portfolios.