Invest 50,000 euros: What tangible value options you have in 2026
Investing 50,000 euros in real estate
Real estate is one of the classic tangible assets in the private investor portfolio. They have a physical intrinsic value and generate current income from rental income, supplemented by possible increases in value. After the price corrections in 2022 and 2023, the German residential real estate market recently stabilised. In the third quarter of 2025, prices were around 3.3 percent higher than in the previous year’s quarter, the fourth consecutive plus.
In most locations, 50,000 euros is not enough to invest in your own property. However, the tangible asset real estate is also accessible without a home, primarily via real estate funds. Here, a distinction is made between open-end and closed-end real estate funds, and the two could not be more different.
Closed-end real estate funds: good returns with a cluster risk
Closed-end real estate funds are alternative investment funds that usually only invest in one or a few properties. Investors benefit from potential returns of around 3% to 5%. However, to participate, higher minimum investment amounts from around EUR 5,000 are usually required, which fall due within a specified investment period.
Closed real estate funds are usually also long-term investments with investment periods of 10 or more years. Early terminations are therefore often barely possible, as the sale of the shares often involves a great deal of effort and additional costs.
If you are familiar with real estate and perhaps already hold another real estate investment in your portfolio, a closed-end real estate fund can offer good potential returns. However, if you invest in one or only a few properties, you cannot diversify widely – in this case, you are more likely to deal with a cluster risk which, in a worst case scenario, will result in a total loss of your investment. Closed-end real estate funds are therefore considered to be particularly risky and are only recommended to connoisseurs.
Open-end real estate funds: Widely spread and plannable
Investing in an open-ended real estate fund avoids cluster risks and long maturities: They invest in a variety of high-quality properties, which are usually spread over different types of use and locations, thus contributing to risk diversification. You generate reliable returns through rental income and sales. After observing the statutory minimum holding periods, you are free to sell or redeem your units. As a result, you can access to your capital again more easily without anticipating additional costs.
The average returns of open-ended real estate funds are solid 2 to 4 percent per year. So what distinguishes this form of investment is not the level of return, but its stability. A 20-year analysis by the IREBS Real Estate Academy at the University of Regensburg confirmed that open-end real estate funds have the lowest risk of loss of all asset classes examined in 2025 and around ten times lower fluctuations than the global MSCI World equity index.
This makes open-ended real estate funds suitable as a security-oriented basis in the portfolio. On this basis, further components can be added for an investment total of 50,000 euros, which aim at higher return opportunities.
Invest 50,000 euros in renewable energy
Renewable energy is a comparatively new and thus still underrepresented investment segment. Investors benefit here from tangible assets such as wind power or solar plants, which generate consistent cash flows over many years thanks to power purchase agreements. The fluctuations in value are very low, as long-term purchase agreements are often used for hedging purposes. However, sustainable added value also makes an investment in renewable energy promising and sustainable.
However, many investment products that invest in renewable energies are not authorised for private investors, but are reserved for companies and institutions. The opportunities and risks of such investment products are also often more difficult to assess.
However, an investment in renewable energies can certainly be worthwhile - which is why we present two investment options here:
Crowdinvesting: doing more together
Crowdinvesting is the financing of projects with the help of a group of investors. Through a crowdinvesting platform, you usually have access to a wide range of projects available to you for an investment.
However, it is your job to deal with the various projects and find a suitable investment. They all look promising when you read the sales prospectuses, but you have to assess for yourself how great the risks actually are.
However, there are also a number of advantages: On the one hand, you usually benefit from good return opportunities when crowdinvesting, and on the other hand from full transparency about your investment project including investment objective, concept and project owners.
This means that you need to trust the project you have selected – which entails a risk of total loss of your capital invested. In particular when it comes to new investment segments, such as renewable energy, retail investors often lack the experience to realistically assess the opportunities and risks – and the same applies to project owners. Especially when competing for the most promising assets in an emerging market such as renewable energy, many issuers have difficulty asserting themselves against large fund providers.
Anyone investing 50,000 euros via crowdinvesting should allocate the capital to several projects anyway in order to mitigate the high individual risk.
ELTIFs: Broadly invest in tangible assets
With ELTIFs (European Long-Term Investment Funds), both institutional and private investors have the opportunity to invest long-term and directly in tangible assets. The financial instrument was first introduced in 2015 to build a bridge between private investment capital and the European real economy.
For example, ELTIFs enable investments in many different types of tangible assets, whether in the field of infrastructure, digitalisation or renewable energies. Usually, an ELTIF invests in several assets at the same time, thus offering investors an internal risk spread across different assets.
Compared to other non-cash options available to retail investors, they offer several benefits. Unlike crowdinvesting, investors do not bear the individual risk of a specific project, but participate in a portfolio managed by professional fund management. In contrast to closed-end funds, the capital is also spread over several investments from the outset, so that the risk of clustering is significantly lower.
Our klimaVest renewable energy fund is also designed as an ELTIF. With around 1.6 billion euros of fund assets, it is Europe’s largest ELTIF (Scope ELTIF Study 2026) and has been on the market since November 2020. Investors invest in 43 tangible assets in 6 (excluding Luxembourg) European countries, mainly from wind and solar power. In the 2024/25 financial year, the fund achieved a performance of 3.5 percent, up from 3.7 percent in the previous year. This makes klimaVest suitable as a broadly diversified individual investment for 50,000 euros.
However, an ELTIF such as klimaVest can also be combined with other investment products to further diversify your investment amount and minimise possible investment risks. In any case, with ELTIFs, you contribute to promoting the European real economy - and benefit from the opportunities of a rising investment segment.
