While looking over the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT) website (https://www.reit.com/) in search of a price index, we found this note about the history of U.S. REITs:
"U.S. REITs were established by Congress in 1960 to give all investors, especially small investors, access to income-producing real estate."
Considering that REITs started in 1960, we were expecting that there would be a price index that goes back to 1960 with a full list of the original members of that index. Strangely, the only price index that could be found begins in 1972. We thought that this is highly unusual, especially from the leading source for information on REITs. The thought becomes, why isn’t there a list of those REITs from the beginning? As the leading source for information on REITs, what are the challenges to providing this information?
Such history and component information can be found for most major indexes like the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Dow Jones Transportation Average, and Dow Jones Utility Average. In the case of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the index is famously known to begin in 1896 for the Wall Street Journal. However, lesser known is the fact that the Dow's first index of stocks appeared in The Customer's Afternoon Letter in 1884 and consisted of eleven companies:
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Chicago & North Western (merged with Union Pacific in 1995)
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Delaware, Lackawanna & Western (merged with Erie Railroad in 1956)
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Lake Shore (merged with New York Central in 1914)
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New York Central (merged with Penn Central in 1968)
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St. Paul (bankrupt in 1925)
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Northern Pacific preferred (bankrupt in 1893)
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Union Pacific (bankrupt in 1893)
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Missouri Pacific (bankrupt in 1915)
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Louisville & Nashville (merged to become CSX Transportation in 1986)
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Pacific Mail (merged with Dollar Steamship Company in 1925)
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Western Union (bankrupt in 1991)
Although there is a list of original members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average going back to the predecessor of the Wall Street Journal in 1884 with extensive history on those companies, there is no such detail from the NAREIT based on traded REITs from 1960.
While we’ve managed to compile a list of REITs from 1961 to 1991, below is the list of REITs that we could find for the period of 1961-1963 as provided by Norman E. Bailey’s paper titled “Real Estate Investment Trusts: An Appraisal.”
We would love to know if there is a full list of REITs from 1960 to 1972 with the price performance from the NAREIT. It would go a long way to improving the knowledge of REITs as investments if this data was made openly available.
When data from 1884 can be found with very little effort on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, what is the challenge of providing similar data from 1960?
see also: REIT Archives
source:
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Bailey, Norman E. Real Estate Investment Trusts: An Appraisal. Financial Analysts Journal. May-June 1966. pages 107-114.