CEO Annual Overview - January 2025

As we enter 2025, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the progress we have made over the past year and to share our ambitions for the year ahead.

In 2024, we embraced some significant changes, including moving to a new office as well as stepping away from the Investment Association, both of which have strengthened our independence and ability to serve our members effectively.

Membership

Our current membership stands at 48 Fund Members, 49 Affiliate Members, 4 Associate Members, and almost 200 Investor Members.

Throughout 2024, we had the pleasure of welcoming nine new members. Among these were two Fund Members: DTZ Investors Co-Living Fund (COLIV) and Aviva Investors Real Estate Active LTAF. Additionally, we were delighted to include several Affiliate Members: Vistra, SS&C, Farrer & Co, Grant Thornton, PwC, and Colliers.

Refreshed Strategy

The AREF Board, Management Committee & team dedicated significant time and thought last year to agreeing on a refreshed strategy for the organisation. This strategy is built around key strategic initiatives and six new pillars designed to deliver greater value to our members and the broader real estate investment community:

These pillars will guide our efforts to deepen government engagement on critical issues like unlocking pension investment in housing and net zero, and to expand our training and mentorship programmes.

Standards & Guidance

Announcing The Charter, AREF's new Code of Practice

As part of our ongoing commitment to excellence in corporate governance, our Corporate Governance Committee spent much of last year undertaking a root-and-branch review of the Code of Practice. The aim was to broaden its relevance, streamline its content, and alleviate the administrative burden for our Fund Members. To that end, I am delighted to announce we will be launching The Charter, AREF's new Code of Practice, over the next few weeks. This new Charter consists of a list of 10 Principles and includes a simplified self-certification process.

Guidance

With the introduction of our streamlined Charter, we are committed to offering an expanded suite of guidance documents to support both the Charter itself and our members. The Corporate Governance Committee is currently working to refresh our guidance materials, to be unveiled throughout the year.

Visit our website to discover the range of guidance already available exclusively to AREF members. From best practice recommendations to invaluable resources, our guidance hub offers lots of insights and support – explore it here.

Lobbying & Advocacy

The latter half of 2024 was particularly busy for our policy team due to the election of a new UK Government. On their very first day in office, we provided them with Insight Papers outlining the challenges and solutions we believe are crucial for attracting capital to invest in real estate funds, reducing carbon emissions from the built environment, and how residential funds can help provide new homes. You can view these papers here:

We have had ongoing engagement with the Government including providing feedback on the first stage of their Pension Investment Review to encourage investment in illiquid assets (link). We fed into their Green Paper on modernising the UK’s Industrial Strategy explaining that the real estate sector is a foundational sector (link). Also, we participated in Homes England’s property symposium looking at how to deliver the housing and regeneration ambitions set out by the Government (link).

In 2025 the main focus of our policy work will continue to be on attracting greater levels of investment into UK real estate from overseas investors, and from UK investors through continuing to work on the DB to DC transition and though greater liaison with the Local Authority Pools, which are growing in importance. We will also be working with appropriate Government departments on measures to increase the viability of homebuilding projects, and on how real estate in all sectors is crucial to supporting the Government’s Invest 2035 industrial strategy.

We are grateful for the support and expertise of our Public Policy, Tax, and ESG & II Committees, as well as members who have contributed by participating in specialist working groups or providing feedback on draft responses. Your support is invaluable in shaping our advocacy initiatives.

Events & Marketing

Last year was incredible for us, with over 20 events organised, including two conferences, fifteen in-person events and five webinars, resulting in more than 2000 event bookings, nearly 100 of which were from non-members. Highlights included:

Held in June 2024 at Merchant Taylors Hall in London, featured engaging discussions, panels, and networking. Open to both members and non-members, the event was attended by 200 delegates and received excellent feedback: 83% rated the conference as Excellent, while the rest rated it Very Good. Additionally, 100% of those surveyed found it good value for money. The majority of attendees highly rated the overall length, structure of the day, topics covered, and the quality of speakers. Highlights included Robert Peston's keynote on planning reform, and a diversity breakfast on social mobility. Sessions covered real estate resilience, stranded assets, future visions for 2040, residential real estate, and natural capital investment. The event concluded with a summer drinks reception. Read more about the Conference and look at the photos in the post event write-up here.

Held at the historic Emmanuel College in Cambridge, brought together the next generation of real estate professionals for an inspiring day. The event featured a mix of keynote talks, breakout sessions, and panel discussions that offered valuable industry insights and opportunities for professional growth. Mark Davy, Founder and CEO of Futurecity, delivered a thought-provoking keynote on urban regeneration and culture-led placemaking. The conference also included interactive sessions on communication, as well as a fireside chat with Adrian Benedict from Fidelity International and a panel on impact investing. Attendees enjoyed punting on the River Cam and a delightful dinner. Read more about the event and view the photos here.

The 22nd AREF Annual Dinner & Awards, held at the Savoy Hotel in September was a memorable event. With over 350 attendees from the UK's real estate investment industry, the evening celebrated the year's accomplishments. AREF Chair Anne Breen, Head of Real Estate at abrdn, delivered an inspiring speech, and the event featured the 13th edition of the AREF Annual Awards (link), honouring outstanding contributions to the sector. The night offered valuable networking opportunities, making it one of the most anticipated events of the year.

A special thanks to all our members who sponsored an event or hosted an event, we couldn't have done all this without you - we are most grateful.

We are currently working on a programme of events for this year, including a new training series, which we will share more details about soon. In the meantime, you can view our current events on our website here.

Webinar on-demand views post-event were almost as high as live attendance. Notably, the PIA NZCBS Webinar held in January (link) had the highest reach, closely followed by the SDR webinar also held in January (link).

Our top LinkedIn posts with the highest engagement rates in 2024 (achieving significant impressions, clicks, and likes/shares) were posts regarding our FutureGen Network (specifically the FutureGen Conference). We posted over 250 times on LinkedIn in 2024, gaining over 1100 new followers throughout the year. Our overall engagement rate for 2024 was 4.84%, compared to the average LinkedIn engagement rate across various industries of 3.8%. Thank you to all our members and stakeholders who continue to engage with us. If you don't follow us, please do, here. We also have an X (Twitter) account and are becoming more active there too, so please follow us here!

The mentorship scheme, run in collaboration with CREFCE last year proved to be a resounding success, with an impressive 90 mentors and 48 mentees participating. A wealth of meaningful connections were made, fostering collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and professional growth across the industry. Be sure to keep an eye out for the launch of the 2025 mentorship scheme, set to roll out later in Q1.

Research & Thought Leadership

Our research programme is now fully operational and focussed on two main workstreams: addressing the obstacles to DC funds investing in real estate as the DB to DC transition continues; and refreshing the case for real estate in an investment landscape where it is now not just competing with listed equities and bonds, but also with other private market assets such as infrastructure, private equity and private credit. Through comprehensive research and analysis, we aim to advocate effectively for the benefits that real estate can bring to investors and wider society.

ESG

We have had a very busy year, producing a number of research documents and resources, these can all be viewed on our new ESG area of the website, which can be viewed here.

Project Holbrook

We continue our discussions with the British Property Federation (BPF) and the Investment Property Forum (IPF) about the potential formation of a new body to better represent the UK real estate industry and we will share more with members as we go through the year.

Collaborations

In collaboration with the Property Industry Alliance in the UK, The European Real Estate Forum in Europe, and The Alliance of International Fund Associations in North America and Australia, we continue to share knowledge and champion the industry’s interests globally (read more on those here).

Member Engagement

I look forward to meeting as many of our members as possible this year, through 1:1 meetings, at one of our events or through our ongoing initiatives. Your engagement is the foundation of AREF’s success, and I am eager to hear your insights and ideas as we navigate the opportunities ahead together.

A reminder to you all that professional investors and their advisers are invited to register for free membership with AREF. We encourage you to help spread the word and support our efforts to engage investors at every level of the organisation, as their insights and involvement are vital in shaping our agenda and driving forward the priorities of the real estate investment community.

Thank you

Thank you for your continued engagement and support and I look forward to working together this year to shape the future of real estate investment.

Below you'll find some of the updates we published in 2024 in case you missed them as well as our upcoming Events.

CEO Annual Overview - January 2025

Membership

Refreshed Strategy

Standards & Guidance

Lobbying & Advocacy

Events & Marketing

Research & Thought Leadership

ESG

Project Holbrook

Collaborations

Member Engagement

Thank you

View our post-event materials from 2024

Upcoming Events

We've moved!