RA-01 — Direct Real Asset
The golden record of a physical asset an investor holds directly — a building, a toll road, a wind farm, a forest — owned outright or through a joint venture / SPV, rather than through a fund.
Specialises: E-02 Instrument / Asset, of instrument_class = real_asset. A directly-held real asset is a position (E-04) in an Instrument / Asset; RA-01 is the entity that carries the physical, locational and structural detail that kind of instrument needs and that no liquid instrument has. Unlike a debt or equity instrument, a real asset has no issuer — issuer_entity_id on E-02 is null — and no universal market identifier; RA-01 carries the asset’s own attributes instead.
Purpose
When an investor owns a property or an infrastructure asset directly, the thing it holds is not a security with a CUSIP and a quoted price — it is a physical asset at a location, with a use, an operating profile and a lifecycle. The core Instrument / Asset entity says only that a real_asset instrument exists; RA-01 is where the asset is — its type, where it sits, what it does, how it is held. It is the anchor record the operating data (RA-02), the leases (RA-03), the development history (RA-04) and the appraisals (RA-05) all reference.
A real asset reached through a fund is not modelled here — that is a portfolio company (PM-04) inside a fund (PM-01) in the private-markets pack. RA-01 is strictly the asset the investor owns and controls itself.
Attribute schema
| Column | Type | Definition |
|---|---|---|
real_asset_id | varchar | Golden key. The OpenIM-assigned canonical identifier (also the instrument_id of the E-02 record). |
asset_name | varchar | Canonical name of the asset. |
asset_category | varchar | The top-level kind — real_estate / infrastructure / natural_resource. |
asset_subtype | varchar | The finer type — office / retail / industrial / residential / hotel for real estate; transport / energy / utility / social / digital for infrastructure; timberland / farmland / energy / mining for natural resources (the four-way natural-resource subtype matches the BD-04 prose). |
country | varchar | The jurisdiction the asset sits in. |
location | varchar | Address, site or coordinates — the physical location. |
tenure | varchar | The legal interest held — freehold / leasehold / concession / usufruct; for a concession, RA-04 carries the term and counterparty. |
holding_vehicle_id | varchar (FK → PM-05) | The legal vehicle / SPV / JV the asset is held through; null where held directly on the balance sheet. |
ownership_pct | float | The investor’s ownership share of the asset, where held in a joint venture; 100 where held outright. |
lifecycle_stage | varchar | development / operational / stabilised / divesting / disposed — see RA-04 for the development detail. |
physical_size | decimal | The asset’s measured size in size_unit. |
size_unit | varchar | The unit physical_size is expressed in — sqm / sqft for real estate, MW for energy, lane_km for a road, hectares for land. |
acquisition_date | date | When the investor acquired the asset. |
currency | char | The asset’s reporting currency. |
external_ids | map | Property-register, land-registry, plant or vendor identifiers (the in-record view of E-14). |
status | varchar | active / under_development / disposed. |
Notes
- A real asset has no issuer and no universal identifier. Where a listed instrument’s master-data problem is normalising vendor feeds, a real asset’s is identity of the physical thing itself across registers, appraisers and operators — RA-01 carries the alias and external-identifier structure for that.
asset_categoryandasset_subtypedrive which other RA entities apply: areal_estateasset typically carries Leases (RA-03); aninfrastructureasset typically carries a concession and a development history (RA-04); both carry operating records (RA-02) and appraisals (RA-05).- The holding structure is deliberately shared with the private-markets pack: a directly-held asset is normally held through a PM-05 Legal Vehicle of
vehicle_type = jvordirect. RA-01 references PM-05 rather than re-modelling the vehicle.
Out of scope
- The generic instrument record a real asset specialises — that is E-02 Instrument / Asset of
instrument_class = real_asset; RA-01 carries the physical, locational and structural detail. - A real asset reached through a fund — that is a portfolio company (PM-04) inside a fund (PM-01); RA-01 is strictly the asset the investor owns and controls itself.
- The asset’s periodic operating data, leases, development history and appraisals — those are RA-02, RA-03, RA-04 and RA-05; RA-01 is the anchor record they all reference.
- The legal vehicle the asset is held through — that is PM-05 Legal Vehicle / SPV, referenced through
holding_vehicle_id; RA-01 does not re-model the vehicle.
Owned and consumed by
- Owned by: SD-13.1 Instrument & Security Master.
- Populated via: SD-04.6 Deal Execution & Legal Closing (the asset enters the book at acquisition).
- Consumed by: E-04 Holding / Position (the investor’s position references this asset as its instrument); SD-04.10 Direct Real-Asset Management, SD-04.11 Development & Construction Management, SD-05.2 Portfolio Management & Monitoring, SD-07.4 Concentration & Exposure Risk, SD-08.3 Private-Asset Valuation, SD-09 Performance & Analytics.
Open extensions
- The asset-component sub-structure — a real asset is often a set of components (buildings on an estate, turbines in a wind farm) with their own ages and condition.
- The relationship between RA-01 and a multi-asset portfolio held in one vehicle.
- ESG and physical-climate-risk attributes on the asset record (the data SD-13.9, the climate-risk analytics SD-07.8), now mandatory under the 2025 RICS Red Book.