REITs & InvITs index: 9.6% a year, yield not included

The number

The Nifty REITs & InvITs index closed at 1,394.36 on 6 October 2026. Its first close in our data, on 12 April 2023, was 1,012.80. That is a price gain of 37.7%, or 9.6% a year. The Nifty 50 gained 27.9% over the same span, 7.3% a year.

REITs own rent-earning buildings and InvITs own infrastructure such as roads and power lines; both pay most of their income out to unitholders. This index tracks the listed trusts' unit prices. It is a price index, so those payouts are not in the 9.6%, and for these trusts the payouts are a large part of the return (more below). Our series is three and a half years long: 860 sessions.

Year by year

The Nifty Realty is there as a contrast: it holds listed property developers, which build and sell. The trust index has moved nothing like them. It missed the 2023 rally almost entirely, beat the Nifty 50 in 2024 and 2025, and has risen in 2026 while the Nifty 50 and the Realty index fell.

A calmer ride

• It did not move with the market. The correlation of daily returns with the Nifty 50 was 0.22. On the 72 days the Nifty 50 fell more than 1%, the trust index rose on 26 and fell 0.34% on average, against the Nifty's 1.53%.
• It is close to its high. The record close is 1,430.52 on 14 August 2026, and the index is 2.5% below it. The Nifty 50 is 13.5% below its record.
• Its worst day was not the market's. The trust index's came on 6 December 2023; the Nifty 50 and the Realty index had theirs on 4 June 2024.

The yield a price index leaves out

Over the 860 sessions the index's published dividend yield averaged 6.95%, between 4.21% and 8.69%. The Nifty 50's averaged 1.29%. A price return leaves out all of that, so it understates the trust index several times as much as it understates the Nifty 50. The average yield gap between the two, 6.95% against 1.29%, is larger than the trust index's 2.3-point lead in price.

The yield has fallen sharply this year, from 6.15% to 4.42%, while the price rose only 4.0%. Price alone does not explain that: close multiplied by yield, a rough measure of payout per index unit, fell from about 82 to about 62. This data cannot say whether that reflects lower payouts, a change in the index's members, or how the different parts of a trust's distribution (dividend, interest and repayment of capital) are counted. We leave out P/E, which has swung from 21.43 at the end of 2024 to 57.84 now and says little about trusts that pay out most of their income.

The two newer versions

NSE has two more trust indices, both too young for more than a line. The Nifty REITs & Realty has closes from 4 March 2026 (146 sessions) and is up 6.7% since, against 5.1% for the REITs & InvITs index and -7.0% for the Nifty 50. The Nifty REITs & InvITs 90:10 has closes from 29 July 2026 (48 sessions) and is down 1.8%, against -1.0% and -6.1%.

What this does not tell you

Total return is the real comparison, and we do not have it. The yield figures above are the best guide this data gives to what was left out.

Three and a half years is a short record. It takes in two Nifty 50 falls of more than 15%, which is not the same as a long bear market.

The pool is small. The index is built from a limited number of listed trusts, so one trust's move shifts it more than one company moves the Nifty 50.

An index is not a fund. You buy units of the trusts themselves, or a fund that holds them, and each has its own costs.

Where to go from here

The guide to REITs and InvITs explains how the trusts work and are taxed, and our post on REITs for small investors covers buying them. For the developer side, see the Nifty Realty P/E post.