REIT Fundraising Drops 18% As More Public Landlords Get Taken Private

With more REITs getting acquired and an interest rate hangover suppressing deals, capital raising for publicly traded landlords is losing momentum. 

REITs have raised approximately $10B so far this year, down $2.2B from the same period in 2025, according to Nareit data.

Of the first-quarter total, the vast majority of funds came from debt offerings, with just $2.4B originating from common equity offerings and $340M from preferred equity offerings. The figure doesn't include at-the-market issuance due to a lag in reporting.

Last year, REITs raised $78.4B in the capital markets, a decrease from the $84.7B raised in 2024.

Following a lack of initial public offerings over the past few years, the first quarter's fundraising total benefited from Janus Living’s $966M IPO in March. Two other firms have announced plans to go public this year.

Last year, Fermi America, a data center-focused REIT, was the only company to go public, raising $785M in gross proceeds. It began trading in October but has had a bumpy first six months: Its CEO was ousted and chief financial officer departed the company this week, and it lost a key tenant at one of its projects.

The average coupon for unsecured debt offerings was 4.7%, as opposed to 5.4% a year prior. But despite the cost of capital being lower, debt issuance totaled $6.3B in the first quarter, compared to $8.9B over the same period in 2025, according to Nareit. 

Following a series of cuts in 2025, the Federal Reserve has held its benchmark rate flat so far this year. The war in the Middle East has been the latest complication for economists attempting to gauge the path of inflation. 

Meanwhile, industry consolidation has picked up as public property owners assert that they are undervalued. In the first quarter, five acquisitions of listed REITs were announced, with an aggregate transaction value of $26.1B, according to the report.

That already exceeds the value of the five merger and acquisition deals that were completed last year, which totaled $14.4B. 

Of those announced this year, only one transaction is public to public — Public Storage’s acquisition of National Storage Affiliates Trust.

Since the beginning of 2021, $279B worth of deals for 49 REITs have been announced or completed. Mergers with other public REITS represented 77% of those transactions.