Equitativa, the largest REIT (real estate investment trust) manager in the GCC, said its Nasdaq Dubai-listed unit Emirates REIT has been inducted into the FTSE Epra/Nareit Emerging Index, following a surge in its daily average trade volumes last year.

Emirates REIT, the first and largest Shari’a-compliant REIT in the world, saw a more than two-fold growth in its daily average trade volumes for 2017 over the previous year.  

The FTSE EPRA/Nareit Global Real Estate Index, EMEA region is a property index designed to track the performance of listed real estate companies and REITs in Emerging Markets. It is one of the indices of the FTSE European Public Real Estate Association (Epra)/National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (Nareit) Global Real Estate Index Series, which was launched in 2008 and covers the world’s largest investment markets.

The inclusion of Emirates REIT in the Index will further enhance interest in the stock as international and regional investors buy the Index constituents to build and manage their investment portfolios.

Equitativa, also the manager of Emirates REIT (CEIC) Limited, said last year, the average daily trade volumes in the shares of Emirates REIT witnessed a sharp surge of 232 per cent to 322,793. This is compared to an average of 138,787 of traded shares daily in 2016.

According to Equitativa, it is the only REIT from the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region to be admitted to the FTSE EPRA/Nareit Global Real Estate Index EMEA. Also Emirates REIT is the only listed Emirati firm to be added to the index in this last review, it added.

Emirates REIT invests in a diversified portfolio that includes commercial, retail and educational real estate assets.  

Equitativa Group Chairman Sylvain Vieujot said: "REITs are starting to emerge as an asset class in their own right in the GCC, and regional retail and institutional investors are recognising these products as stable, long-term, and income-yielding investments that offer portfolio diversification as well as sector diversification."

"Investors particularly value independently managed REITs as evidenced by the increase in trade volumes of the Emirates REIT shares last year," he added.-TradeArabia News Service