REAL ESTATE INVESTMENTS CATCH THE VIRUS

Retail landlords may see stores miss lease payments as shoppers avoid public places, cutting stores’ sales, profits, and cash flow.
The FTSE Nareit Allk REITS Index, which includes all real estate investment trusts traded on major U.S. stock exchanges, dove 12.3 percent last week, a far worse performance than broad-based market index funds.
“People were selling everything that had held up better,” said Kevin Preloger, a portfolio manager at Perkins Investment Management. “There was really no place to hide.”
The damage already has struck Intu Properties, a British mall owner that now has abandoned plans to issue £1.5 billion worth of stock to pay off debt and tidy its balance sheet.
“Who… [is] going to a shopping center now or willing to sit in a cinema?” wondered Nicholas Rabener of FactorResearch.