We see little chance of a GFC-style collapse in US REITs

While we think that US REITs have further to fall over the rest of this year, we doubt that they will fare nearly as badly as they did during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), nor underperform ordinary US equities significantly, like they also did back then. One key difference between then and now is that the latest boom in commercial property markets has been much less reliant on debt, meaning that it has not involved anything like the same build-up of leverage as in the mid-2000s.

Note: We’ll be discussing the US August employment report in an online Drop-In session on Friday, 2^nd September. Register now.