ICF News and Press, iShares Cohen & Steers REIT ETF From 05/18/19

Real Estate Weekly Review Following the worst week of 2019 for the major equity indexes, the S&P 500 ( SPY ) finished the week lower by another 0.7% as trade talks have reportedly broken down between the US and China. Progress on North American trade relations and a delay of the European...

By Robert Hughes Housing activity improved in April as starts and permits posted gains. However, details varied widely among the segments and regions. Total housing starts rose to a 1.235 million annual rate from a 1.168 million pace in March. The dominant single-family segment, which acco...

Homebuilder sentiment saw a stronger-than-expected increase in May, as the NAHB sentiment survey rose more than expected to 66 from 63 and expectations of 64. Even after this month’s increase, sentiment remains well off its cycle high of 74 from December 2017, but it does erase much of ...

REIT Performance REITs have achieved gains in all four months of 2019, with a stellar 18.67% return year to date. REITs (+0.51%) underperformed the broader market in April, falling short of the NASDAQ (+4.74%), S&P 500 (3.93%) and Dow Jones Industrial Average (+2.56%). The market cap-w...

Two decades of easy credit and hyper-consumption from North American households have encouraged a massive overbuild in the retail sector and commercial real estate. In the process, retail - which includes online giants like Amazon (AMZN), eBay (EBAY), big-box chains, and smaller brick and mo...

Real Estate Weekly Review The major US equity indexes delivered their worst week of 2019 after a new curveball was thrown into trade discussions between China and the United States with the implementation of new 25% tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods. REITs ( VNQ and IYR ) were among...

REIT Rankings: Single-Family Rentals In our REIT Rankings series, we introduce and update readers each of the residential and commercial real estate sectors. We rank companies within the sectors based on both common and unique valuation metrics, presenting investors with numerous options...

The newest S&P/Case Shiller home prices indices were released last week, and below is an updated look at the data. On a month-over-month basis, 16 of 20 cities saw home prices gain, with Charlotte, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and Boston seeing declines ranging from -0.13% to -0.38%. On a year-...

The National Association of Realtors (NAR - existing home sales reports) and the Census Bureau (new home sales reports) report monthly sales on a "seasonally adjusted annualized rate" (SAAR) basis. Notwithstanding the reliability, or lack thereof, of the "seasonal adjustments," it would seem a...

What a difference plunging mortgage rates make! That's our initial reaction to seeing what's happening in the West region of the U.S. housing market, where the combination of very high existing home sale prices and rising mortgage rates had been killing the real estate market in these stat...