- Separate and Unequal: The American Dream, Peter C. LaGreca, 16 Rutgers Race & L. Rev. 183 (2015).
- Reverse Mortgage Loans: A Quantitative Analysis, Makoto Nakajima & Irina Telyukova, FRB of Philadelphia Working Paper No. 14-27.
- Reverse Mortgages: What Homeowners (Don’t) Know and How it Matters, Thomas Davidoff, Patrick Gerhard & Thomas Post.
- Housing Price Volatility and the Housing Ladder, James W. Banks, Richard W. Blundell, Zoé Oldfield & James P. Smith, NBER Working Paper No. w21255.
- The Financial Rewards of Sustainability: A Global Performance Study of Real Estate Investment Trusts, Franz Fuerst.
- A New Look at the U.S. Foreclosure Crisis: Panel Data Evidence of Prime and Subprime Borrowers from 1997 to 2012, Fernando V. Ferreira & Joseph Gyourko, NBER Working Paper No. w21261.
Tag Archives: Real Estate Investment Trust
Reiss on Investing In Real Estate Versus REITs
Investopedia quoted me in Investing In Real Estate Versus REITs. It reads in part,
The U.S. real estate market is finally starting to fire on most, if not all, cylinders, with investors’ enthusiasm gathering steam seemingly each passing month.
According to a study from the Urban Land Institute and PwC,expectations on profitability from the U.S. real estate sector are on the upside going forward. “In 2010, only 18% of respondents felt the prospects for profitability were at a good or better level,” the ULI reports. “This has improved steadily each year, with 68% of respondents now feeling that profitability will be at least good in 2014.”
The study reports that myriad investment demographics are pouring into the market, including foreign investors, institutional investors and private equity funds, as well as leveraged debt from insurance companies, mezzanine lenders, and issuers of commercial mortgage-backed securities.
“The anticipated interest in secondary markets is indicative of how the U.S. real estate recovery is expanding beyond the traditional investment hubs,” says Patrick L. Phillips, chief executive officer at the ULI. “Access to greater amounts of both debt and equity financing, combined with a sustained improvement in the underlying economic fundamentals, means that the opportunities and returns offered in smaller markets are potentially very appealing.”
A burgeoning profit avenue for investors is the real estate investment trust market, a market that is truly growing by leaps and bounds. Ernst & Young reports the REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) market has grown from $300 billion in 2003 to $1 trillion by 2013, with growth expected to accelerate going forward.
By definition, an REIT is a corporation, trust or association that owns and, in most cases, operates income-producing real estate and/or real estate-related assets. Modeled after mutual funds, REITs pool the capital of numerous investors. This allows individual investors to earn a share of the income produced through commercial real estate ownership, without having to go out and buy or finance property or assets.
REITs differ from traditional real estate investing, primarily due to the fund-heavy strategic asset flow from REITs, versus the traditional free, more direct access flow from real estate investing (like becoming a landlord or buying stocks from homebuilding companies.) But both investments offer distinct advantages
* * *
some industry experts say the advantages of both investment classes cut much deeper than the descriptions above.
One big difference is that the market for REIT shares is much closer to the efficient market described by Nobel Prize winner Eugene Fama than the market for individual real estate parcels is, says David Reiss, a professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, and an expert on REITs.
“That means that the price of a REIT’s shares is more likely to contain all available information about the REIT,” he says.
“Because individual real estate parcels are sold in much smaller markets and because the cost of due diligence on a single property is not as cost-effective as it is on REIT shares, an investor has a better opportunity, at least in theory, to get a better return on his or her investment if he or she does the diligence him or herself.”
Reiss on the State of the Empire REIT
I was quoted by Bloomberg News in Empire State Building IPO Has Almost All Votes Needed. The story opens,
A plan to form a real estate investment trust holding New York’s Empire State Building has almost all of the votes needed to proceed, Malkin Holdings LLC said today.
Holders of 79.6 percent of the units of Empire State Building Associates LLC, which owns the Manhattan landmark, have voted in favor of the transaction, Malkin Holdings said in a regulatory filing. That’s up from 75 percent as of April 3, the most recent update. Eighty percent approval is needed.
The votes indicate that Malkin Holdings Chairman Peter Malkin and President Anthony Malkin, who control the tower, are edging closer to victory in their plan for an initial public offering of the building and 20 other properties. The Malkins, who have been fighting opposition from some of the investors, recently won two court rulings that eliminated potential obstacles to the plan.
The filing, a letter being mailed to all investors, “creates a sense that the vote is a fait accompli,” said David Reiss, a professor of real estate finance at Brooklyn Law School who isn’t involved in the transaction. “It is an effective document for creating a sense that this is a done deal.”
Court Rulings
On May 2, New York Supreme Court Justice O. Peter Sherwood said he intended to approve a $55 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit by a set of unit-holders. He has yet to make his approval official. Two days earlier, he denied a request by objectors to the settlement to declare a provision illegal which could result in opponents getting a token $100 a share if they didn’t switch their votes to “yes” within 10 days of official approval by 80 percent of the building’s units.
Malkin Holdings had said it would leave the voting on the IPO open until Sherwood ruled on the $100 provision, or until May 2. The voting has been open since late January, and the Malkins have the option to extend the ballot period until the end of 2014.
Each Empire State Building unit may be worth more than $300,000, according to the offering statement.
In today’s filing, investors are reminded that the buyout provision is “legally binding and enforceable.”
While the Malkins may invoke the provision to get the needed unanimity, they “may not enforce the $100 price,” Reiss said.
