How we measure what a fund costs
Every figure in the Fund Library comes from an SEC filing. We read each fund's annual or semi-annual report, 10-K, or prospectus, record what it states, and keep a link to the filing behind every number. Nothing comes from a manager's marketing material, and no figure is estimated.
Cost of ownership
The cost of ownership answers one question: what share of your money goes to the manager and the wrapper each year, whether or not the fund performs. It is the ongoing charge, so it excludes costs that do not repeat.
For a fund that reports an expense ratio, the cost is the net expense ratio, minus interest on borrowings, minus any incentive fee accrued in the period, plus the sales load spread over the holding period you choose. Interest is excluded because leverage is matched by the assets it funds. Incentive fees are excluded because they depend on performance rather than being fixed. Both are shown as their own lines on the fund page, so nothing is hidden by being removed. Acquired fund fees, the costs charged inside underlying funds, are shown separately: they are already reflected in reported returns.
Non-traded REITs report costs in dollars rather than as a ratio, so their cost is entity-level expenses (advisory, servicing, administration, audit, legal, transfer agent, directors) plus sponsor fees charged at the property level (acquisition, disposition, financing, development, and affiliate property management fees), divided by average net asset value, plus the amortized load. Property operating costs, depreciation, and mortgage interest are excluded, mirroring the fund treatment: those are costs of the assets and they show up in the returns. The denominator is net asset value because these vehicles charge their fees on it.
Both bases divide fixed annual dollars by net assets, so a REIT charging 5% and a fund charging 1% really are 4 points apart in what an investor pays before any return. They are not, however, the same measure across share classes, and the next section says why.
The figure is one share class, and which one depends on the basis
A cost of ownership is always the cost of a named share class, never an average of a fund. Every fund page states the class its figure belongs to, directly beneath the figure. 291 of the 292 funds publishing a cost name their class; one does not, and its page says so.
Which class that is depends on how the fund reports. 235 of the 292 state an expense ratio, and for those the published figure is the institutional class, which usually pays no shareholder servicing fee. 56 are REITs or BDCs reporting their expenses in dollars rather than as a ratio. Those filings state one entity-level total that already contains the shareholder servicing fees of every class, and no current filing separates them out, so that figure is blended across the classes rather than being any single one. The remaining 1 fund does not state a basis its record can determine.
Both follow the definition above, and neither is wrong. They answer slightly different questions. An institutional-class ratio is the cheapest an investor can pay, and a blended dollar figure sits somewhere above the cheapest class and below the most expensive. Anyone comparing a non-traded REIT against an interval fund is comparing a blended figure against a single class, and should read the REIT as the higher of the two by however much its servicing fees come to. We publish the asymmetry rather than hide it, because closing it would mean estimating a split that no filing discloses.
The holding period, and when it changes anything
A front-end load is paid once, so its annual cost depends on how long you hold. The holding period control spreads that load over the years you choose instead of over three. It changes a fund's figure only where a front-end load is actually inside that figure, and for most funds there is none.
Of the 292 funds publishing a cost, 7 carry a front-end load inside the figure, at rates of 2%, 3% and 6.75%. 194 carry none, because the class the figure belongs to charges no load. For the remaining 91 the record does not establish which class's load is inside, and rather than guess we leave those figures unchanged at every holding period and say so on the fund page. So moving the control changes 7 figures and leaves 285 exactly as they are.
The load spread is the load charged on the class the figure is for. A fund may offer a class charging 3.5% alongside an institutional class charging nothing, and where the figure is the institutional class, that 3.5% is a fact about the fund and not a cost inside the number. It is shown on the fund page as the range across classes, and it never enters the published figure.
Ongoing, not one-off
A fund's reported period often contains costs that will not happen again: organizational and offering costs in a first year, merger or reorganization expenses, a tax true-up, or the repayment of costs the manager had advanced. It can also contain a temporary fee waiver that makes the period look cheaper than the fund will be. The published figure is the ongoing cost in both cases, and where the reported period differs the fund page states what it was and why.
Periods
Figures come from the most recent period each filing covers, and every fund page states which period that is. Where a fund reports both an audited ratio in its financial highlights and an estimate in a prospectus fee table, the audited figure wins. Every percentage is annual: a semi-annual figure is annualized once, never twice.
How the numbers are produced
Each fund's filings are read in full and the cost is determined under the definition above, with the components and a source quote recorded alongside it. Every figure is then bounded and cross-checked in code: a component can never exceed the ratio that contains it, a fee terms rate can never be recorded as an accrual, and a number outside its plausible range is dropped rather than published. Each fund carries a confidence level, and where a filing does not disclose every component separately the fund page says so.
A weekly audit re-runs these checks across the library and flags anything that drifts. Funds whose filings do not support an honest figure show no cost rather than a guess.
Returns
Where a fund reports a total return based on net asset value, we use it: the most recent full fiscal year, the same institutional class, excluding any sales load. Many non-traded REITs publish no return figure, but they do publish net asset value per share at each year end and the distributions they declared. For those, the return is the change in net asset value per share plus distributions per share, over the starting net asset value per share, and the fund page says the figure was computed that way. That distinction matters: a non-traded REIT's net asset value is an appraisal-based figure its own manager determines, not a market price. A fund that publishes neither a return nor those inputs shows no return.
What is in the library
The library covers unlisted evergreen vehicles: interval funds, tender-offer funds, non-traded BDCs, and non-traded REITs. Exchange-listed closed-end funds, listed REIT operating companies, municipal bond funds, and vehicles in liquidation are excluded, because an allocator cannot buy them or cannot compare them on this basis.