Are REITs beginning to run out of gas?
At a time when everyone seems to be debating the downshifting in residential real estate, some other real estate vehicles have been careening down Wall Street like a bunch of Lamborghinis in overdrive.
They’re called real estate investment trusts, or REITs (rhymes with “treats”), and they offer investors a way to get in on the property game without becoming landlords and having to answer calls to fix toilets.
These publicly traded corporations invest solely in real estate and are as diverse as the real estate world itself, with trusts specializing in apartments, offices, retail space, hotels, hospitals, self-storage, factories and even live-work lofts.