First Health Care REIT
June 1970: Health Care Fund, founded by Bruce Thompson and Frederic Wolfe, becomes the first health care REIT. The company changed its name to Health Care REIT, Inc. in 1985 and later changed again to Welltower Inc. (NYSE: HCN) in 2015..
1969 The first European REIT legislation is passed in The Netherlands. This marks the beginning of the global spread of the REIT model, with listed property trusts launching in Australia shortly after in 1971. Canadian REITs debut in 1993 but it isn't until the turn of the century that expansion takes off. REITs began to spread across Asia with the launch of Japanese REITs in 2001. REITs in Europe were buoyed by legislation in France (2003), Germany (2007) and the U.K. (2007). In total, more than 35 countries now have REIT legislation.
1960-1961 The first REITs--Bradley Real Estate Investors, Continental Mortgage Investors, First Mortgage Investors, First Union Real Estate (now Winthrop Realty Trust, NYSE: FUR), Pennsylvania REIT (NYSE: PEI) and Washington REIT (NYSE: WRE)--are created. The latter three are still in existence today.
November 2014: Paramount Group Inc. (NYSE: PGRE), which owns office properties in New York, San Francisco and Washington, held the largest IPO by a U.S. REIT to date. The $2.3 billion raised in the Paramount IPO eclipsed the previous record of $1.6 billion raised when Douglas Emmett, Inc. went public in 2006.
August 2014: India became the 31st country to enact REIT legislation following action by the Securities and Exchange Board of India, which issued rules that closely hew to U.S. REITs. Notably, Indian REITs will be required to distribute at least 90 percent of net distributable cash flows to investors at least once every six months. At least 80 percent of the value of Indian REITs’ assets must come from properties that are generating revenue.
October 2012: In response to a formal request from NAREIT, the CFTC issued interpretative guidance stating that Equity REITs that use derivatives for mitigating their exposure to changes in interest rates or fluctuations in currency are outside the definition of “commodity pool” and exempt from its registration requirements.
April 2012: NAREIT released research by Wilshire Associates helping target date fund (TDF) managers to develop more effective 401(k) and other retirement portfolios. Wilshire found that a TDF portfolio including U.S. REITs would have produced an ending portfolio value nearly 10 percent higher than a portfolio without REITs over the 35-year period from 1976 through 2010, while also reducing risk.
June 2012: NAREIT migrated its Leader in the Light award program framework into the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) platform. An important element of the migration into GRESB included integrating into the GRESB platform a set of optional, supplemental "Leader in the Light" questions that, if answered by a NAREIT corporate member, enters the member into the Leader in the Light award competition.
January 2012: The FTSE NAREIT All Equity Infrastructure REITs Index was created as a new property sector to include all Equity REITs designated as infrastructure REITs.
September 2011: NAREIT’s Public Non-Listed REIT (PNLR) Council and its associated Working Groups met for the first time at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C. The mission of the PNLR Council is to advise NAREIT’s Executive Board on matters of interest and importance to PNLRs.
March 2011: NAREIT held its first-annual Leader in the Light Working Forum. The collaborative working session brings NAREIT member executives together to discuss the key drivers of sustainability in real estate, share leading sustainability practices and identify future events, initiatives and milestones in sustainability.
1989-1991 REIT stock prices decrease well before substantial decline in prices of private real estate begin to be measured. However, REIT share prices also begin to increase well before recovery in the private real estate market is measured.