James Sprow | Blue Vault |
The total returns to shareholders in continuously offered nontraded REITs were consistently positive throughout 2021 and into January 2022. All 11 of the continuously offered NAV REITs reported positive returns and a median total return for the group of 1.41%. If annualized, that monthly return would equate to over 17%. The total returns are calculated using the change in the net asset value per share (NAV) and the cash distributions as a percentage of those NAVs. Since all of these REITs have multiple share classes, we report total returns to Class I shareholders for eight REITs and Class A shareholders for Jones Lang LaSalle Income Property Trust and Class IX for Cantor Fitzgerald Income Trust. These share classes do not have fees deducted from the distributions.
Chart I shows the total returns reported by the REITs on their websites on the “Performance” pages. These performance figures are usually updated on the REIT websites several weeks after the end of the month, which means the performance data for February 2022 have yet to be posted for all 11 REITs.
Chart I
Chart II shows the median total shareholder returns for all continuously offered nontraded REITs for each month since January 2021 for those share classes with no shareholder servicing fees deducted (Class I, Class A and Class IX as stated above).
Chart II
For comparison, the total returns for the S&P 500 Index are shown in Chart III. The median returns for the nontraded REITs have very low month-to-month variation and have not had a negative median return since March 2020. The S&P 500 returns were negative four months out of 13. The standard deviation for the median nontraded REIT returns over the 13-month series was just 0.63% while the standard deviation for the monthly S&P 500 returns over the same period was 3.67%.
Chart III
Source: Blue Vault and REIT websites