Real estate investment trusts first came to fruition in the US in 1960, as a bid by Congress to make large-scale, income-producing real estate portfolios more accessible to all investors.
The additional liquidity and portfolio diversification benefits of REITs are now well known, with the asset class's global market capitalisation currently surpassing $2trn. This was not always the case though, according to Cohen & Steers' co-founder Bob Steers, whose listed real assets firm now manages more than $100bn of investors' money. In 1986, when the company was founded, the entire market capitalisation of the US market stood at less than $6bn. "We really had to make the case both to the wealth and institutional market as to why they should bother with such a small slice of t...
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