What are REIT prices based on?

I don't know that Simon has provided rent % paid like some other REITs have during this, but it isn't good - they're in the midst of suing their largest inline tenant (Gap) for unpaid rent, two of their anchor tenants are bankrupt, most of their other top tenants are dated and things aren't looking great for the mall biz. Some retail landlords saw as little as 15% of April rent. https://therealdeal.com/2020/04/20/some-retail-landlords-have-collected-just-15-of-april-rents-report/

"In fact, REITs have crashed much harder."

Because you have tons of retailers and restaurants not paying rent for months to retail landlords and a lot of skepticism about office rents. There's also some other assorted odds/ends issues (hotel reits have bounced but still have a long ways to go, billboard reits not doing well with advertising in a downturn, mortgage REITs were obliterated and some healthcare reits were down quite a bit. Entertainment REIT EPR w/movie theaters and other things is still down and I'm surprised it's bounced as much as it has.)

Meanwhile, data infrastructure REITs (cell towers, data centers) have done well because hey, fundamentals are actually good. Fundamentals for many REIT sectors during this were bad-to-awful and for some of these things I have to question the fundamentals going forward.

A REIT is a traded stock, it's not going to be priced based on the value of the properties like some sort of private fund (and you can invest in private REITs and then wind up having the thing be gated to redemptions in a downturn.)

There were certainly some opportunities in REITs in March - HHC in the $30's and others. At this point though, I'm only owning things where I think there's a compelling long-term story like an AMT.

/r/investing Thread