Nareit Developments

During the first three months of 2015, NAREIT conducted 139 meetings with many of the largest and most influential investment organizations within the institutional investment marketplace, primarily in the U.S., but also in Mexico. Collectively, these entities represent more than $17 trillion in assets under management or advisement.

NAREIT's Communications team regularly evaluates how we communicate to our members as well as the broader public. This includes printed publications such asREIT magazine; REIT.com, the leading online source for REIT industry news and information; and multimedia offerings such as NAREIT's web videos and podcasts. NewsBrief is among NAREIT's most important lines of communication with its membership. In an effort to provide you with a more reader-friendly product, our weekly electronic newsletter will start hitting your inboxes next week in a new format.

NAREIT senior executives traveled to China in March to meet with government, investment and market organizations in Beijing and to speak at the 2015 China Wealth Management Forum in Hangzhou. NAREIT's China outreach initiative supports efforts by Chinese government officials and other organizations to develop REIT-based real estate investment in China, to promote investment in U.S. REITs by Chinese investors and investment organizations, to inform Chinese real estate interests about joint business opportunities with U.S. REITs and to develop relationships with Chinese real estate and investment organizations.

NAREIT participated in the 2015 Spring Conference of the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA), in Washington, D.C. PREA corporate members focus primarily on institutional real estate investment through private markets. The conference attracted more than 800 attendees representing pension funds, as well as their investment consultants and real estate fund managers.

NAREIT submitted testimony last week to the Hawaii House of Representatives Committee on Finance opposing a proposal directing two state agencies to prepare a study of REIT activities in the state (S.B. 118, S.D. 1, H.D. 1).

NAREIT's Investor Outreach team participated in the Texas Association of Public Employee Retirement Systems (TEXPERS) annual conference in Austin, Texas. The TEXPERS membership includes 71 pension and retirement systems representing approximately $89 billion in assets. 

In March, NAREIT’s Investor Outreach team met with a diverse group of 59 global investment organizations controlling more than $5.5 trillion in institutional investment assets. The meetings were held with organizations across all targeted investment cohorts, including 16 with U.S. and Latin American pension and endowment plans; two with investment consultants; 20 with investment managers; and 21 with organizations and associations active in supporting the global pension and retirement industry. 

REITs' investments in sustainability keep rising, as do their returns on those investments, according to research on NAREIT's Leader in the Light (LITL) program.

A study of data from LITL found that participating companies increased their total investment in energy efficient projects by roughly 30 percent over their three-year moving average from 2011 to 2013. The study, which was conducted by RealFoundations, also determined that savings in 2014 from sustainability projects nearly doubled the previous three-year moving average. A similar comparison found that return on investment for those projects was up approximately 40 percent -- a 54 percent increase when compared with the ROI of 26 percent for projects between 2011 and 2013.