Press Releases & Media

Stock exchange-listed REITs combine the investment benefits of real estate with the benefits of a liquid market, which has become progressively more so.

Six Equity REIT sectors had dividend yields at the end of July that exceeded the yield of the FTSE NAREIT All Equity REITs Index’s 3.47 percent. 

The Free Standing Retail category led the Equity REIT market in the first seven months of the year with a 40.36 percent total return.

Stock exchange-listed U.S. REITs delivered total returns more than double those of the broader equity market in the year through July. 

Dozens of students from universities across North America are competing in the Real Confidence™ University Portfolio Challenge II, a year-long competition for university students to gain hands-on learning experience in public and private commercial real estate investing. The students will take part in an investment simulation competition to manage a $1 billion real estate portfolio, indexed to well-known real estate benchmarks.

The study provides a comprehensive review of investment allocations and actual investment performance across 12 asset groups. The analysis looks at fund performance over 17 years, the longest period for which CEM had data for some of the assets studied, and it utilizes a proprietary dataset covering more than 200 public and private sector pension plans with over $3 trillion in combined assets under management. 

The equity market capitalization of the U.S. REIT industry broke the $1 trillion mark in the second quarter of 2016.  On June 30, the 222 REITs in the FTSE NAREIT All REITs Index had a combined equity market capitalization of $1.06 trillion, up from a combined $984 billion for the 220 REITs in the same index at the end of the first quarter of the year. 

Equity REITs significantly expanded their holdings of income producing real estate in recent years, buying a total of $260 billion of commercial property between 2011 and 2015.

In a new, 17-year study of asset performance at 200 major pension funds, REITs were the top performing asset, with 12 percent average annual returns.  They also had the lowest allocation, at 0.6 percent of total fund assets.

Over the two market days following the Brexit vote, U.S. stock market volatility more than doubled, from 9.9 percent (below its inter-quartile range) to 22.0 percent (above its IQR)—but U.S. REIT market volatility only nudged up from 9.6 percent to 10.9 percent.

REITs continued to attract yield-seeking investors in the first half of the year.  The FTSE NAREIT All REITs Index provided a dividend yield of 3.97 percent on June 30.  The FTSE NAREIT All Equity REITs Index provided a dividend yield of 3.59 percent, and the FTSENAREIT Mortgage REITs Index’s dividend yield was 10.87 percent.  In comparison, the dividend yield of the S&P 500 was 2.17 percent.

Data Centers were the top performing Equity REIT property segment in the first six months of 2016 with a 37.82 percent total return.  Free Standing Retail, which consists of retail facilities occupied by a single tenant, was the second best performing segment with a 34.46 percent gain.