FRI News and Press, First Trust S&P REIT Index Fund From 06/15/22

The REIT sector has fallen in 4 of the first 5 months of 2022, including a -3.51% total return in May. Small cap (-2.26%) and mid cap (-3.46%) REITs outperformed, while large caps (-4.48%) and micro caps (-5.82%) saw deeper losses in May. Only 31.18% of REIT securities had a posit...

Amid mounting recession worries and a return of heart-stopping market volatility, residential REITs - particularly the traditionally countercyclical single-family rentals - should prove to be a source of relative shelter. Single-Family Rental REITs were born from the last economic cri...

We think the Federal Reserve is likely to remain hawkish both in policy and communication until there is a turn in either the labor data or an improvement in inflation. Housing activity is already decelerating and is at the leading edge of Fed policy. As housing activity slows, pricin...

Understood to be one of the more "bond-like" and rate-sensitive REIT sectors, net lease REITs have surprisingly been among the best-performing property sectors this year despite the challenging macroeconomic environment. Even with rent growth significantly lagging inflation, net lease...

In urban areas within an hour’s drive of Toronto (broad GTA), the average sale price topped $1,000,000 in February 2022. The Canadian median home sale price touched $816,000 in February. Now that carrying costs have risen sharply over the past year, property prices are stag...

Applications for mortgages to purchase a home dropped 7% for the week, and were down 21% from a year ago. The MBA’s Purchase Mortgage Applications Index has now dropped below the lows of late 2018. The percentage of people who said that now is a “bad time to buy ...

Mortgage refinance applications continue to fall as fewer homeowners are balking at the highest rates in over a decade. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s index tracking refinance applications fell for a fifth week in a row, and currently sits at the lowest level since December...

Essex Property Trust is an S&P REIT focused on the West Coast rental market with a long track record of delivering outstanding shareholder returns. The company pays an annual dividend of $8.80/share, and they have been growing the annual payout for 28 consecutive years. Shares...

An ATM program for RTL’s equity and preference shares is in existence for the past 3 years, which has demotivated investors to a large extent. RTL’s portfolio of service-oriented and traditional retail and distribution-related commercial real estate properties has high o...

One of the ways to make portfolios more resilient to inflation right now is owning the currencies of large commodity exporters, both in developed and in emerging markets. One other expression of the theme is by directly trading commodity curves, especially the longer end of the oil fu...