I am writing this post in reply to a comment I received earlier about Singapore Real Estate Investment Trusts (SREITs). Over the past few months I have also had many enquiries about REITs in general. So I thought why not write a post about analyzing REITs? Before we begin, let’s start with the definition of REITs. REITs are basically corporate entities which invest primarily in real estate and have various tax benefits. To qualify for the tax benefits, a REIT is required to distribute at least 90% of their taxable income to unit holders. This rule is very important as we note that since most of the profits are paid out as dividends, REITs do not retain much of the profits for debt redemptions, asset enhancement initiatives (AEIs) or acquisitions. The first thing to understand about SREITs is that they invest in different types of properties. The classes of properties ......