REIT chiefs make 57x more than their employees on average: report

Work at a real estate investment trust? Looks like your company probably thinks your labor is worth 57 times less than that of your boss, wherever he or she is today.

The CEOs of the top 100 REITs make even higher salaries in relation to their underlings than the rest of the REIT pack, according to report from industry consultancy FPL Associates, earning 77 times the employee average.

When REITs are broken down by market sectors, wider divides emerge. For self-storage and multifamily REITS, the CEO-to-employee pay ratio is 132 to 1 and 129 to 1 respectively.

In a particularly startling example, the median employee at Park Hotels & Resorts made just $21,082 in 2017, while its CEO Thomas J. Baltimore, Jr. made $12 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. That’s a gap of 567 to 1.

However, some REIT execs and observers say the data is flawed. Tom Morey, general counsel at Park Hotel, told the Journal that if only full-time employees were considered its company pay ratio would sit at a much more equitable 64 to 1.

And besides, Park Hotels’ investors have “expressed minimal interest” in the issue, he said. [WSJ] — Will Parker