REITS
Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are corporations or trusts that use the pooled capital of many investors to purchase and manage income property and/or mortgage loans. REITs are traded on NGX just like stocks; you can buy or sell REITs through your stockbroker as with other types of shares.
Key features
- REITs offer tax advantages to investors and provide a liquid way to invest in real estate, which is an otherwise illiquid market.
- Another benefit of REITs is that they allow investors to share in non-residential properties like hotels, malls, and industrial properties.
- REITs require no minimum investment and do not necessarily increase and decrease in value along with the broader market.
- They pay yields in the form of dividends no matter how the shares perform.
- REITs can be valued based on fundamental measures – similarly to stocks – but different numbers tend to be important for the valuation of REITs.
There are three principal types of REITs:
Equity REITs – purchase, hold and manage commercial and rental properties. Though they will finance these properties in many cases, their primary focus is on profits through acquisition and management.
Mortgage REITs – do not purchase, own or manage properties. They invest in mortgages on real estate properties. Though these properties serve as collateral for the loans the mortgage REIT invests in, the REIT has no ownership position in the property itself.
Hybrid REITs – combine the investment strategies of equity REITs and mortgage REITs by investing in both properties and mortgages.
CEFs
Closed-end funds (or closed ended funds) are collective investment schemes with limited number of shares. It is called a closed end fund (CEF) because new shares are rarely issued once the fund has been launched, and because share are not normally redeemable for cash or securities until the fun liquidates.
Some characteristics that distinguish a close-end fund from an ordinary open-end mutual fund are that:
- It is closed to new capital after it begins operating, i.e. they do not continue to sell new shares endlessly as Mutual funds do.
- Its shares (typically) trade on stock Exchanges rather than being redeemed directly by the funds.
- Closed-end funds trade continuously at whatever price the market dictates (it can trade at premium or discount to NAV), while open-end funds can only trade at Net Assest Value (NAV)
Resources
- The NSE Close End Funds 3.12 MB