No area of real estate has been under more pressure than the office sector.  We won’t belabor the headwinds – flexible work, tech downsizing, debt maturities, etc. – in today’s report, but there is a niche section of office space benefiting from robust demand drivers.  Historically, we referred to this group as Medical Office Buildings […]

Historically, following periods of rising interest rates, REITs have outperformed the S&P 500 over the subsequent 90-, 180-, and 365-day periods as shown in Figure 1 below.  We discussed this phenomenon in great detail in our May 2024 REIT Outlook titled An Interesting Time to Invest in REITs.  From its May 1st release through September […]

Commercial real estate fills many roles in society and, arguably, none is more essential than feeding the population.  The first thought might be grocery stores, but today’s report dives deeper into the extensive infrastructure and logistics existing between food producers and consumers.  Not only are frozen food sales growing rapidly (estimated 5% compound annual growth […]

Originally created in 1960, the REIT structure’s purpose was to democratize real estate for the masses.  In addition to managing properties, reporting and complying with SEC requirements, and paying dividends from cash flow, they also employ finance, investment, development, and strategic personnel to make decisions that can grow value beyond a steady state portfolio.  In […]

We recently attended the annual REITWeek conference, where we conducted 36 meetings with REIT CEOs and CFOs.  We also attended four organized dinners, one property tour, and a run around Central Park with a REIT management team to maximize our time in New York City with REIT executives. – The key themes were: 1) a […]

In recent history, e-commerce can be argued as the biggest societal shift to impact commercial real estate.  We’ve detailed the topic in retail outlooks from November 2022 and November 2021, and more recently in our Industrial Outlook from March 2024.  Many expected the surge in online shopping during the pandemic to supercharge the “death of […]

Unfortunately for REIT investors, REIT prices have yet to decouple from movements in long term interest rates – and rates are rising again in 2024 as of April 30.  Because real estate typically generates a steady (and growing) yield, there has historically been a playbook that REIT prices should trade down when rates are rising, […]

One of the most important jobs of REIT executives and Boards of Directors is capital allocation.  Depending on cost of capital, acquisition and development yields, and the point in the real estate cycle, a public REIT will have to employ different capital allocation strategies.  One of the forgotten and often purposely swept-under-the-rug line items is […]

As a result of the normalization of e-commerce growth after the pandemic boom, there have been numerous headlines about retailers and logistics companies rationalizing their warehouse footprints, including from the 800 lb. gorilla, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN).  However, these normalizations come off an exceptionally high base, and we believe the forward outlook for industrial is far […]

Following a spectacular year of total returns and relative outperformance in 2021, multifamily REITs have underperformed the MSCI U.S. REIT Index (Bloomberg: RMZ).  The underperformance for multifamily REITs has been a product of both the macro environment (rising interest rates) and record high apartment deliveries, especially in Sun Belt markets.  While the fears are for […]