Dr. Case: REITs really hit their bottom on March 6 of this year, and since then, they have been up on the order of 50%. The return during the second quarter for all REITs was 27.5%, and for equity REITs it was 28.85%. Those are records. The index goes back to the beginning of 1972 and we've never had a quarter with such strong returns, but it's not exactly unprecedented because it really has a lot to do with the phase of the market cycle. When you look back 18 years ago, when we were in a similar phase of a similar market cycle, we also had a return of about 22% in 1991.
TWST: Do you think then that the REIT market has bottomed? Is talk of that
premature or is the optimism warranted?
Dr. Case: I'm not an equity analyst, I don't try to pick the direction of
stock prices on a daily or monthly basis. So I'm not willing to call the bottom,
to say that the downturn is over, until we're back up to where we were before
the downturn started. However, given they were up 50% since the bottom, it looks
an awful lot like we did see the bottom. At the very least, investors have good
reason to be very optimistic about the future course of REIT stock prices, and
that's based more on what's happening in the REIT industry rather than simply
what has happened to REIT stock prices in the last several months.
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.