REITs offer various options

Ong said there are various sectors in which one can invest in REITs.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Real Estate and Housing Developers’ Association (Rehda) organised a seminar on real estate investment trusts (REITs) at Wisma Rehda on Aug 25. The seminar was held to educate participants on the various REITs available and what a REIT investor should look out for.

“The seminar is designed to elaborate on the various types, timeline and structuring methods of owning a REIT,” said chief executive officer of Sunway REIT Management, Datuk Jeffrey Ng.

“What people need to understand is that investing in a company that handles REIT is different from investing in [a] company itself,” said Ong Eu Jin, a partner with Lee Hishammuddin Allen & Gledhill Ong advocates and solicitors.

Ong said there are various sectors in which one can invest in REITs.

“For example in Australia, Arena REIT invests in childcare centres and is the first to do so. Then you have Boustead that does plantation, and Farmland partners which dabble in farmland. The Link REIT in Hong Kong invests hugely in parking lots,” said Ong.

He said in Malaysia to date, several ideas are being discussed by relevant parties on what are the REIT investment options. Islamic REITs were also discussed.

“There are companies that have converted from conventional REITs to Islamic REITs,” said Ong. “[By doing so], you can tap into [the whole] market and not just a certain sector. There is also a list of what constitutes permissible and non-permissible conditions which one can download from the Securities Commission Malaysia website,” he added.

The seminar also covered stamp duty and real property gains tax for M-REITs, business trusts, stapled REITs, and the types of initial public offerings allowed on Bursa Malaysia.


This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on August 29, 2014.