The Impact of Introducing REITs on Foreign Investments and Liquidity in South Africa

Abstract More than 30 countries have introduced real estate investment trusts (REITs). One main objective is to attract foreign investors and improve the liquidity of the respective listed property sector. We investigate whether the introduction of REITs meets this objective by using the South African listed property sector as a laboratory. In particular, we employ panel data to investigate whether converting to REITs improved the liquidity of listed South African property firms through foreign investments. We find that foreign investor trading after the introduction of REITs has a significantly positive impact on activity measures such as turnover and trading volume. On the other hand, the significantly negative impact of foreign investor trading on friction measures such as bid-ask spread and Amihud's (2002) illiquidity measure, which was prevalent in the pre-REIT period, disappears once REITs were introduced. Thus, the introduction of REITs eliminated the impact of foreign investments on the depth and ...