Indirect investment in real estate through Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) in South Korea has steadily grown for over two decades since the early 2000s. It initially began with the establishment of REITs for restructuring purposes, gradually evo...
Indirect investment in real estate through Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) in South Korea has steadily grown for over two decades since the early 2000s. It initially began with the establishment of REITs for restructuring purposes, gradually evolving with a focus on institutional investors possessing ample capital and specialized operational capabilities,
eventually growing around private REITs. Subsequent policy initiatives aimed to expand market participation in REIT investments. Particularly, the most recent policy attempt in January 2022 allowed investment through pension savings accounts, enabling individual investors to include REITs in their pension assets.
However, there are still many shortcomings in terms of popularizing REIT investments. The activation of the listed REIT market is essential for the democratization of REIT investments. The listed REIT market is currently lacking in various aspects, such as the scale of individual REITs and market volatility. Ultimately, for the popularization of listed REITs,
qualitative growth in listed REITs is necessary, progressing towards a form suitable for long-term investment rather than speculation Government regulation and support are crucial for this, and policy research is already being conducted by relevant institutions and academia.
Secondly, investors need theoretical learning and analytical methodologies to verify the investment feasibility of public REITs. Fortunately, various specialized institutions and financial institutions are publishing in-depth materials. Lastly, transparent information must be provided to make investment decisions in public REITs.
The analysis of the impact of rights offerings events on domestic Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) revealed that, among domestic investors, both the Intermediate group (holding 5% or more but less than 10%) and the Low group (holding less than 5%) experienced statistically significant negative cumulative abnormal returns (CAAR) following rights offerings
events. Moreover, this negative price effect was observed to intensify over the medium term after the event. In contrast, the High group of foreign investors, holding 10% or more, showed a less pronounced negative trend in CAAR during the short-term event window compared to the Intermediate and Low groups, although statistical significance was not found.
In conclusion, the results of this event study suggest that even in the adverse event of rights offerings, a higher foreign ownership percentage is associated with less pronounced negative effects on stock prices, aligning with the findings of previous research indicating that an increase in foreign ownership corresponds to an increase in corporate value.
Additionally, in a separate simple regression analysis, the foreign ownership percentage was found to have a statistically significant positive impact on REIT prices, suggesting that foreign investors may possess information advantages or interpretation capabilities compared to general investors, consistent with previous research by An Yoon-Young (2010).
This study aims to analyze the impact of information transparency on the stock returns of public REITs and the correlation between rights offerings and information transparency for the enlargement of public REITs. Through these analyses, the study intends to provide assistance to all potential investors in public REITs, including domestic financial institutions, real
estate-related companies, large corporations, and individual investors seeking to invest in REITs.