Recent Trends

Before leaving this chapter on REIT history, REIT share performance, and what drove that performance, let's quickly review some fairly recent trends in REITville.

Size Increases

The typical equity REIT has greatly increased in size (see Figure 6.5). At the end of 1994, there were only four REITs with equity market capitalizations of over $1 billion. Primarily due to a combination of increasing stock prices, merger activity, and equity offerings, there were 83 REITs with equity market caps of more than $1 billion by the end of 2010, and 20 equity REITs had equity market caps exceeding $5 billion. Simon Property Group, with an equity market cap of $29.1 billion as of December 31, 2010, was then the largest REIT. As we saw in Chapter ...

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