Diversification and Property Control Impact on the Performance of Brazilian REITs

Abstract

The Brazilian Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) had a market capitalization of 20.2 billion dollars on July 31, 2018, and is a constantly growing market, according to the Brazilian Association of Financial and Capital Market Entities (ANBIMA). This paper seeks to analyse property-type diversification and property control management strategies in the performance of Brazilian REITs, measured by Jensen’s Alpha indicator, using a dynamic regression panel data from 110 REITs in the period between 2002 and early 2016. The results suggest that a property control strategy positively affects the performance of Brazilian REITs, indicating that trusts could improve performance by avoiding conflicts of interest with third parties, and perhaps agency problems inside the REIT’s corporate structure by having full control over its properties. When excluding mortgage REITs from the sample, the property-type diversification also presents a positive and statistical relevant impact on performance, surpassing the impacts of a focused strategy. Finally, it is noted that the performance of Brazilian REITs have high persistence, which indicates that managers seek to achieve a target performance and maintain this performance over time.