REITs Report Uneven Traffic - Reits - Multifamily Executive Magazine

Coming into the apartment REITs third quarter conference calls, analysts had one overriding concern.

“People were really focused on fundamental trends,” says Paula Poskon, a senior research analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co., a Milwaukee-based wealth management, capital markets, asset management, and private equity firm. “Because these stocks have been priced to perfection for a long time, the market is hyper sensitize to bad news. In this round of calls, I think there was a lot of questioning in trying to understand if there was real slowdown happening.”

Coming in, one analyst saw observers in two specific camps. "Heading into earnings, the bears were saying apartments were going to show weakness from the summer pause and thus the apartment rebound was coming to an end. The bulls were saying the landlords had pushed hard during the summer and post-peak summer leasing were switching to focus on occupancy," says Alexander Goldfarb, managing director of equity research of REITs for New York-based Sandler O'Neill + Partners. "We still think the apartment recovery has legs but third quarter results were not strong enough either way to dissuade the bulls or the bears from their respective views."

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