| Summary: | Abstract
The Singapore Real Estate Investment Trust (S-REIT) history is relatively short compared to US and Australia. The first REIT in Singapore was listed on Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) 8 years ago by CapitaLand, the largest real estate company in South-east Asia. It took the government 6 years to agree to CapitaLand’s REIT suggestion. It took off with some ‘glitches’ and today there’s 22 S-REITs listed by various sponsors. In 2008, the S-REITs total market capitalisation was worth US$19 billion and in June 2010 US$15.5 billion in the city-state.
The prospect of S-REITs were good, economic fundamentals were strong, market confidence was high, more investors were getting familiar with REITs, some REITs IPO were in the pipeline, until the US Subprime crisis ‘blow out some lights’ and started the ‘gloomy weather’ in the financial markets globally. There was a domino effect, blue chips were somewhat affected, few were unscathed. Though REITs are advocated as defensive investments, S-REITs share prices were also not spared from downward pressures.
The Singapore government has put in measures to ensure some stability and confidence in our financial system. Presently, the economic climate has improved but there are still some uncertainties in the financial markets. Some S-REITs have managed better and some have more difficulties during the credit crunch.
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