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A rally for real estate stocks amid a tumultuous week for Trump
Remax’s stock is up 8% so far this week
Real estate stocks have ticked up this week, weathering a downward trending S&P 500 and the extraordinary news that the House Speaker had opened a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
The Real Deal analyzed a cross section of 28 real estate stocks — a mix of real estate investment trusts, research firms and brokerages — and found that the prices rose just over 1 percent on average since Monday’s market open. That’s about on par with the Real Estate Select Sector SDPR Fund, an index heavily weighted toward the industry.
Among TRD’s sample, the strongest performer this week was brokerage RE/MAX Holdings, whose stock price so far this week has risen almost 8.2 percent to close at $30.82 on Thursday. The weakest performer was Marriott International. The hotel chain’s stock closed at $121.67 on Thursday, a nearly 3.6 percent fall from its Monday opening price.
Meanwhile, the S&P dipped about 0.2 percent, continuing its downward track from last week.
But a Thursday morning tweet that Trump sent, warning that “the markets would crash” should an impeachment inquiry take place, did not happen. That followed Tuesday’s decision by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to open a formal impeachment inquiry into the revelation of a whistleblower complaint that was filed in August. It accused Trump of pressuring Ukraine’s president to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Now back to real estate: As for REITs, they so far have been outperforming the market overall. For the week through Wednesday, U.S. equity REITs bumped up less than half a percent.
And so far this year, U.S. equity REITs have seen returns up 20.64 percent this year — thanks to the strongest-performing sector, manufactured homes — compared to just 4.48 percent for the S&P. That’s according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
The industry’s uptick this week marks a slight reversal for real estate stocks, which last week took a dip after the Federal Reserve formalized its anticipated second interest rate cut of the year.