Real estate investment trust

s were created from a law that Congress enacted in 1960 to enable small investors to invest in real estate without either the large capital required to purchase single properties, or the responsibilities of property maintenance on a direct realty purchase. When holding shares of an equity REIT, an investor is an actual owner of the underlying real estate.

REITs receive special tax treatment--the deduction of dividend payments on their corporate income taxes-- as long as the primary purpose of the company is to own real estate and it pays out 90% of its dividend income (rental income or mortgage interest) each year to shareholders. The special tax treatment REIT dividends receive means that they are deemed non-qualified dividends for the investor (ie. not subject to the lower "qualified" dividend tax rate granted to firms subject to double taxation). This makes REITs very tax-inefficient, and best held in tax-deferred accounts.

If an investor has filled up available tax-advantaged space with bonds and wants to invest in REITs, placing them in a low-cost variable annuity or a non-deductible traditional IRA is usually more tax efficient than holding them in a taxable account. Alternately, an investor can also switch taxable bonds held in tax-advantaged accounts for REIT held in tax-advantaged and adding municipal bonds held in taxable accounts.

Types of REITs
REITs are typically characterized by the nature of the assets the company holds: real estate, mortgages, or a combination of the two.
 * Equity REITs: own physical real estate and are traded on a public stock exchange. This makes REITs very liquid unlike owning real estate on your own. Equity REITS make up over 80% of the U.S. REIT market, and include the following sectors:
 * Diversified REITs: own a diverse group of properties not tied to any specific sector or industry.
 * Industrial REITs: own industrial real estate, ie. used for industry manufacturing.
 * Office REITs: REITs that own office buildings or other similar property.
 * Residential REITs: REITs that invest in residential real estate, such as apartment complexes.
 * Retail REITs: REITs that invest primarily in retail properties such as shopping malls.
 * Specialized REITs: own property that is specialized in a single use (such as lodging or storage).


 * Mortgage REITs: Invest primarily in mortgages backed by commercial real estate, and the earnings are from the mortgage loans.
 * Hybrid REITs: REITs that invest in both property ownership and mortgages.
 * Private REITs: Private (non-traded) REITs are not traded on a public stock exchange, and are very illiquid. These are often sold by financial advisors who receive large commissions, an indication that they are not looking out for your best interest, and are designed to be sold and not bought.

Composition of MSCI REIT index
Below is a table of a percentage breakdown of the different types of REITs in the MSCI REIT Index.

Valuation of REITs
REITs are typically valued using two factors: yield, and premium (discount) to NAV.

Dividend yield
A REIT's yield is calculated exactly as stocks and is expressed as an amount of dividends (in percent) a REIT will pay investors.


 * $$\mbox{Dividend yield}=\frac{\mbox{dividend per share}}{\mbox{price per share}}$$

Unlike a bond's Yield-to-Maturity (YTM), there is no presumption that capital, i.e. NAV, will be returned to investors in that equation (the redemption of a bond).

With common stocks, company boards decide how much of Earnings Per Share are to be paid out as Dividends Per Share. This can cover a large range, as many pay no dividends at all, but Dividends Per Share may typically range from 1.5 to 3 times Earnings Per Share.

With REITs, Earnings Per Share are not an accurate measure of a REIT's performance. Investment analysts usually use an adjustment to earnings known as Funds From Operations (FFO) as a more accurate measure of an equity REIT's profitability and capacity to pay dividends.

US tax laws require essentially a payout of 90% of GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principle) taxable income, so "adjusted" Earnings Per Share and Dividends Per Share are closely aligned. Therefore, it is appropriate to value the REIT on a dividend yield basis.

For example: A REIT has a share price of $100. The total dividend for the REIT is expected to be $3.00 over the next 12 months. The REIT is therefore said to be trading at a prospective dividend yield of 3/100 or 3%.

Average premium (discount) to NAV
A REIT's Net Asset Value is calculated as:


 * $$\mbox{NAV per share}=\frac{\mbox{gross value of buildings}-\mbox{debt}}{\mbox{number of shares}}$$

Debt is taken deducting any cash that is on the REIT balance sheet.

The quoted price of a REIT, which trades like any stock, can differ from NAV. Historically, when the market is bullish about future Commercial Real Estate values, stocks move to a premium to NAV. This is also true if there is a lot of takeover activity in the REIT sector. In essence, investors are expecting NAVs to rise. The discounts are quite analogous to closed end funds, which normally trade at a discount to the value of their underlying investments.

Green Street Advisers publishes graphs showing estimated average premium (discount) to NAV. The premium (discount) to NAV has ranged from over 30% premium to 40% discount over time.

Expected returns from REITs
William Bernstein has proposed a simple model for estimating long term returns for equity REITS. The sources of return for a REIT are:


 * The current dividend yield, ( in our example above $3.00 per share).
 * Any future growth in dividends. William Bernstein has shown that these grow by less than GDP. For REITS, rental income growth is usually assumed to roughly equal the inflation rate.
 * The change in valuation of the REITs, or ‘speculative return’.

As an example, if REITs are currently yielding 3% and we expect future dividend growth of 3% per annum (i.e. slightly ahead of inflation), then expected long term returns are = 3% + 3% + change in valuation.

Speculative return
The following example illustrates the role of speculative return in the valuation model.

In our example above, the REIT has a share price of $100 and pays $3.00 dividends per annum. Our assumed yield on REITs (c. 3%) is very low compared to historic ranges. A pessimist might argue REITs will eventually return to say a 6% yield, implying a halving of valuation. If this revaluation took place over 18 years, the expected return of REITs in the formula above = 3% + 3% - 4% = 2% per annum.

In other words, in 18 years, our REIT would have dividends of $5.11 (x 1.03^18), a price of $85.12 (5.11/ 6% yield), but the investor would also have received the dividends paid out in that time period, giving a positive total return despite the fall in valuation.

Note that in this model, because a yield is a per cent rather than a times (‘x’) like PE, a rise in yields is a fall in valuation, while a fall in yields is a rise in valuation.

The most important thing to observe both about premium/ discount to NAV and yield, for REITs, is that it is anything but stable. Even the long term average may not be that helpful, because real estate tends to have long cycles and the reversion to mean from a high or low takes so long.

Dividend composition
REIT dividends are composed of three different types of yield income, which are taxed at different rates:
 * Return of Capital: This is a return of your own investment and is not taxed upon distribution, it reduces your cost basis by the amount of the dividend.
 * Capital Gain: Results from sale of properties or other assets, taxed at either short or long term capital gains rates.
 * Dividend: Income which usually results from rental income of properties, which is non-qualified and taxed at your full marginal tax rate.

The exact breakdown of the REIT fund dividends are not known until after the calendar year, sometimes as late as late February or early March. Beware of this if you hold REIT in a taxable account.

Interest rate risk
REIT prices may decline as the interest rate rises.

Sector risk
Equity REITs are one specific sector of the stock market; there are only 97 stocks in the MSCI REIT index. This makes REITs more volatile than broad market index funds. Some suggest that public REITs represent only a small slice of the commercial real estate market, and are best referred to as a separate asset class rather than a sector.

Returns
The NAREIT Equity Index provides the longest term history of U.S equity REITs, covering the period from 1972 to the present. Over this period, equity REIT's annual return ranged between a high of +47.59% in 1976 and a low of -37.73% in 2008.

The 1973 - 1974 bear market in REIT stocks was predominantly marked by the negative performance of mortgage REITs which made up the majority of REIT issues during this era. These mortgage REITs had a large number of holdings in real estate building and development loans, many of which defaulted in the recessionary economic environment. . The NAREIT Mortgage REIT indexed declined -36.26% in 1973, and dropped -45.32% in 1974.

After the 1973 - 1974 bear market equity REITs remained a small portion of the overall equity market. In 1975 the market consisted of 12 equity REITs with a market capitalization of 275.7 million dollars. Tax changes in 1987 and 1992 set the stage for a steady increase in both the number of equity REITs and the market capitalization of the REIT market (in 2012, 139 REITs with a market capitalization of 544,414.9 billion dollars). . In 1994, with the maturation of the equity REIT market, Vanguard introduced an equity REIT index fund, tracking the MSCI US REIT Index.

Most equity REIT market declines have historically preceded or been coincident with economic recessions. The NAREIT Index declined in the 1989 - 1990 recession;, declined again in the 1998 - 1999 bear market in advance of the 2000 - 2002 overall U.S. market decline (during which equity REITs provided positive returns); and declined once again in 2007 - 2008, the beginning stages of the 2008 - 2009 recession.

Role in a portfolio
Most Bogleheads allocate REITs up to 10% of their total portfolio according to a forum poll. David Swensen, CIO of Yale University and author of Unconventional Success suggests a 20% allocation to equity REITs in his model portfolio for individual investors.

REITs, due to the risks involved, should be treated as equity even though they have income-producing characteristics similar to bonds.

REITs can act as a portfolio diversifier since they have varying correlation to stocks and bonds (either higher or lower). REITs are weakly correlated to inflation, due to the hard asset/rental income nature of the investment, however if you are looking specifically for inflation protection, use individual TIPS, held to maturity, instead.

For investors using a portfolio of Vanguard market based or style based index funds, one should consider what percentages of REITs  are present in Vanguard index funds before adding a separate REIT fund.

Funds
Indexed portfolios of equity REITs are available as both mutual funds and exchange traded funds. Fidelity and Vanguard offer low cost REIT index mutual funds. Ishares, Schwab, Guggenheim, State Street Global Advisors, and Vanguard offer equity REIT exchange traded funds.