It’s been a week since the introduction of Vanguard Global ex-U.S. Real Estate ETF (VNQI), and yet we know very little about it. Listed for trading last Monday (11/1/10), VNQI intends to provide ETF investors with a new path to international real estate exposure. The underlying S&P Global ex-U.S. Property Index is a free-float-adjusted, market-capitalization-weighted index measuring the performance of 425 international real estate securities from 35 developed and emerging markets.
VNQI has an expense ratio of 0.35%, making it the lowest cost international real estate ETF and lower in cost than the majority of domestic real estate ETFs. Vanguard’s website is currently not reporting top holdings and country allocation, but I presume they informed Authorized Participants as to what holdings constitute a basket for share creation and redemption purposes.
Eventually, additional information will be available on the VNQI overview page. In the mean time, investors don’t seem to mind the lack of specifics, as more than 300,000 shares already changed hands.