David Baskin North American REIT NRF.UN-T COMMENT Jan 09, 2014

When people became concerned about tapering of the quantitative easing last spring, they sold off all the REITs, as they felt they were interest sensitive investments. They all have mortgage debt, mostly equal to about 65% of their equity. When those mortgages get renewed at higher rates, it would hurt profit margins. He views increasing rates as a 2 edged sword for REITs. Certainly mortgage costs do stand to rise, but if there is more inflation, then they can force their rents up at the same time. Higher inflation and higher interest rates might actually be positive. Every engineered product has embedded management costs, so in his view, you are much better off to pick 2 or 3 that you like. He prefers H&R Real Estate (HR.UN-T) and Crombie REIT (CRR.UN-T).