When it shut the fund for withdrawals in mid-December, DB Real Estate officials said some property holdings might be overvalued after the sale of some offices fetched less than it had hoped. Weak domestic demand and excess supply particularly in offices have kept property prices almost unchanged in Europe's largest economy over the past five years in stark contrast to strong price rises in other countries.

As GlobeSt.com reported previously, the fund, which--was shut for withdrawals in mid-December after news of the write-down triggered a run on its assets--will re-open for redemptions on Friday. Two other German open-ended real estate investment funds were closed in January after big net outflows, which threatened those funds' minimum liquidity requirements.

The German mutual funds association released figures last month showing that the total net outflow from the country's open-ended real estate investment funds was euro 4.2 billion ($5 billion) in January compared with an outflow of euro 3 billion ($3.6 billion) in December. Assets managed by German open-ended property funds quadrupled in a few years after the burst of the stock market dot.com bubble in 2001 as risk-averse investors flocked to the perceived safe-haven of real estate from equities.