Real estate investment trusts have been the way that many people invest their property money for a long time now, since they allow people to leverage their income with that of others in order to get higher returns. And of course since a Real estate investment trust in most cases is required to pay out at least 90% of the profits that they make, it has always been a very good idea for someone that does not want to pay a lot of attention to the overseas property market but would like to invest in it anyway.
With the turbulent 2007 year that many of the conventional and developed property markets around the world have had, interest in property in those countries has declined sharply and is expected to decline even more heading into the 2008 year. However, when this trend is examined in sub-category terms, what is discovered is that the people that are leaving those shores for others are primarily people that pay close attention to the property markets of the world and regularly move money around.
In other words, while many people are pulling money out of conventional real estate property markets, the REITs are largely keeping their business to the point where most of them are expected to weather the storm very nicely.
And while REITs in developed countries are holding their own, REITs in developing countries are exploding as foreign investment floods into their coffers. In fact, many Malaysian REITs are revising their revenue projections upwards because of the unexpected amount of capital they are receiving from foreign property investors and that in turn is resulting in an overall heating of the Malaysian property market.
All in all, the year is looking very good for some REITs and decent for others, but the REIT part of the property sector looks to be generally increasing in popularity as time goes on.