The National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) was founded in the early 1980s by investment managers as a solution to investor demands for a benchmark to measure manager performance. The NCREIF Property Index (NPI), the first index the organization produced, led by the work of Frank Russell Co., began with fourth-quarter 1977 data and consisted of properties with no leverage. The NPI is an appraisal-based index and all properties in the index are domestic.

Initially, the NPI consisted of the industrial, hotel, office and retail property sectors. Apartments were added several years later. This index, still published on a quarterly basis, measures the performance of unlevered, tax-exempt properties held by NCREIF members. In 1995, leveraged properties were added to the NPI on a deleveraged basis.

Since the launch of the NPI, the index world has greatly expanded