What is a REIT?
A Real Estate Investment Trust or REIT is a company that owns and manages a group of real estate properties. There are about 225 REITs here in the US that are registered with the S.E.C. and they trade on stock exchanges.
They have a market cap of more than one trillion dollars. What are the different types of REITs?
So, there are two categories of publicly traded REITs. There is Equity REITs and there are Mortgage REITs. So Equity REITs basically own and manage properties like residential properties, industrial complexes, shopping malls. There's also specialty REITs that own properties like casinos or specialty movie theaters. The second type of REIT is a Mortgage REIT. So that invest directly in mortgages or mortgage backed securities.
