REITs gained last week, and have been up four out of the past five weeks. The FTSE Nareit All Equity REITs index posted a total return of 5.2%, a bit ahead of the 3.1% return on the Russell 1000.
Nearly all sectors recorded increases, the one exception being a negative 1.0% total return among home financing mREITs. Returns by sector were within a narrower range than in prior weeks, with all sectors having single-digit increases. Self storage led the way with a 9.8% total return last week, followed by infrastructure (7.9%) and office (7.8%).
These small but steady weekly gains are eroding the cumulative declines that occurred in the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis. The All Equity REITs index had been down as much as 37.6% on March 23, but since then has recovered more than half of those losses, to be down 15.3% YTD.
Data center REITs and infrastructure REITs, which are getting a tailwind from the surge in Zoom meetings and other online communications, have had robust returns of 19.3% and 17.9%, respectively.
