ABSTRACT
German fund managers were not natural sellers. They bought buildings and held onto them, using rents to feed returns to their investors. German valuers had the same list of priorities as the funds: location, quality, lease length and rental income. If the American style of investing moved away from property, what happened with the German funds was the story of being too close to the bricks and mortar. The majority of investors that swung the door open on the London market in the early 1990s immediately slammed it shut and gasped. As the German funds entered more and more new markets, they attempted to invest without fanfare. That wasn't easy to do when most of their deals broke new records, and they started to top investment league tables in many of European countries. German investors, the majority of which were the open-ended funds, had spent EUR5.6 billion outside Germany, and EUR5.1 billion inside.
