REITs return 4.7% in November
December 6, 2018 | Loretta Clodfelter | Institutional Real Estate, Inc.
REITs bounced back in November, according to the FTSE Nareit Equity REITs Index, which showed a 4.74 percent total return. That was a turnaround from October’s 2.97 percent decline. Year to date, the index is up 3.93 percent.
REITs outperformed the broader market, as measured by the S&P 500 Index, which returned 1.79 percent in November.
REIT investors, who often display sensitivity to interest rate movements, may have been encouraged by the comments of Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, at the end of the month. In a speech at the Economic Club of New York on Nov. 28, he stated, “Interest rates are still low by historical standards, and they remain just below the broad range of estimates of the level that would be neutral for the economy — that is, neither speeding up nor slowing down growth.”