A Real Estate Investment Trust(or REIT) is a type of security that invests in real estate through property or mortgages and often trades on major exchanges like a stock(investopedia.com, accessed 2016.11.01.). REITs provide investors with a liquid sta...
A Real Estate Investment Trust(or REIT) is a type of security that invests in real estate through property or mortgages and often trades on major exchanges like a stock(investopedia.com, accessed 2016.11.01.). REITs provide investors with a liquid stake in real estate and allows both small and large investors to acquire ownership in real estate ventures.
Korea adopted REIT as a system to overcome the financial crisis. After the foreign exchange crisis in 1997, corporations began to sell off real estates in order to pay off debts and the values of Korean real properties plummeted. In 2001, Korean REIT was introduced under the “Real Estate Investment Trust Act”, in order to support the restructuring of corporate and financial institutions. This historical background lead Korean REIT(K-REIT) to develop within the private market which excluded a core characteristic of being listed for the public. As a result, unlike other countries, REIT was perceived as a type of Real Estate Fund in Korea.
In 2004, an “Indirect Investment Asset Management Business Act” was introduced to start Real Estate Funds in Korea, which was fueled by private equity market capital(Lee and Seo, 2004). With the introduction of Real Estate Fund, K-REIT was faced with direct competition and its development has been slowed down.
Recently great efforts have been made by “Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport” to revitalize and regain the identity of K-REIT. Number of studies were ordered to provide solutions. One of the suggested solutions is to increase the size of individual REIT and to make them act as a company with permanent life span.
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the larger REITs are more stable against external shocks therefore supporting the solution provided for the revitalization of K-REIT.
To demonstrate the larger REITs are less susceptible to external shocks, responses of the large and the small groups of REITs’ return rates to the macroeconomic shocks were compared. Monthly return rates of Vangard REITs ETF were used to represent large REITs group. For its counterpart, monthly return rates of IQ US Real Estate Small Cap ETF were used. macroeconomic variables used as external shocks are the inflation, the default risk premium, the NCREIF index for real property market, and the stance of monetary policy. The magnitude of impacts were larger for small REITs to the changes of monetary policy and the default risk premium. The impact of changes in real estate market performance and the inflation was greater on the large REITs group, however, the recovery was quicker. Overall, the large REITs did show greater resilience to the external shocks.