The US REIT market accounts for some of the largest REITs in the world and is a multiple size of the Australian REITs.
One of the advantage of investing into a larger market is that there a multitude of more investment options which allows for more effective diversification.
The Australian market is heavily weighted towards traditional property sectors such as office, retail and industrial while the US sector is biased towards alternative sector like health care, data center and even senior housing. A larger investable universe presents more opportunity to find value.
Publicly Traded US REITs vs AREITs
We have put together a list of top US reits ranked by market capitalization and review the list to highlight some of the key differentiartors to the Australian market.
- There are a lot more operating businesses which represent developers of real estate rather than straight rent collecting companies
- There are more global REITs. Australian REITs were burnt during the GFC and have shied away from investing overseas. The US real estate market is one of the largest and deepest market but there are still a number of REITs with international real estate exposure.
- The largest REIT is a trust that owns cell phone towers.
- The Residential sector is a institutional market compared to Australia where investment properties are mostly in the realm of individual investors. The residential sector is one of the largest asset class.
US REIT List
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