REITS - Real Estate Investment Trusts

Anupam Narayan

Canada Reit Sr. V.P. Global Strategy and CFO - Best Western

Real estate can be a wise investment but beyond purchasing a home of your own, what is the best way to invest in real estate without getting your hands dirty and spending your spare time chasing tenants for rent A REIT or Real Estate Investment Trust may be the perfect investment vehicle. REITs own, and often operate, real estate but are publicly traded like stock. Profit is paid as dividend to stock owners.

Reit Investor

• Northern Trust added a Japanese real estate investment trust fund to its NETS family of ETFs. NETS Tokyo Stock Exchange REIT Index (JRE) started trading Sept. 8. The country's REIT market makes up 10% of all global real estate investment opportunities, according to Northern Trust.

Real Estate Trusts Anupam Narayan is senior vice president Global Strategy and chief financial officer of Best Western International, the worlds largest hotel chain. He is responsible for all financial matters, global strategy, planning, procurement and legal services and is on Best Westerns executive committee.

Narayan is a 20-year veteran of the lodging industry and has previously held management positions at Doubletree Corporation, Red Lion Hotels and Holiday Inns Inc.

His career has included significant accomplishments in initial public offerings, corporate and real estate debt financing, REITs, joint ventures, investor relations, SEC reporting, mergers and acquisitions, dispositions, development and planning. Narayan has negotiated and closed over $2 billion in corporate and real estate credit lines, $2.2 billion in acquisition debt to support lodging company acquisition bids and raised over $290 million in two IPOs.

Narayan is a member of the Financial Executives Institute, Urban Land Institute and the American Hotel & Motel Association. He often speaks at various hotel industry and investment conferences. He is a 1976 graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur) and received his MBA at the University of Florida in 1981.

The authors of the report point out that US REITs (real estate investment trusts), on which the proposed PIF model is based, are primarily concerned with commercial property, and that REITs make up less than 1% of the US private rental sector. They suggest that, in the UK, 4% at most of the private rented sector. But they see PIFs as potentially serving particular niche areas such as affluent professionals, students, urban regeneration and new build, and affordable housing.

[ Comment, Edit or Article Submission ]