Blackstone REIT IPO

Blackstone, according to this Bloomberg article, is listing the first of what could be four real estate investment trust IPOs.  Brixmor Property Group, a lamely named community shopping center REIT, is looking to raise $905.6 million.  Brixmor consists of the former US holdings of Australia's Centro Holdings, which ran into trouble and was scooped up by Blackstone during the financial crisis.  In addition to Brixmor, Blackstone is also expects to list other portfolio companies, including Hilton Hotels, IndCor Properties and Invitation Homes.  That's almost as many listings as American Realty Capital.

There is a point of clarification in the article.  It states that there have fourteen REIT IPOs in 2013:

So far in 2013, real estate IPOs have raised $3.9 billion, compared with $3 billion in all of 2012, the data show. The total was $7 billion in 2004, when the biggest stock sales were BioMed Realty Trust Inc. and CBRE Group Inc.

A Brixmor sale at the top end of the range would exceed the $811.8 million raised by Malibu, California-based house-rental company American Homes 4 Rent (AMH) in July, including overallotments. It would follow only the $1.07 billion offering of Empire State Realty Trust Inc. (ESRT), the New York-based owner of Manhattan’s Empire State Building, for deals this year, according to the Bloomberg data.

Missing from the list of IPOs are all the non-IPO listings of non-traded REITs, including COLE, Columbia and Chambers Street.  (American Realty Capital Trust III and Cole Credit Property Trust II were mergers with other entities, not direct listings.)  None of the non-traded REITs that listed rasied additional equity as part of their listings, which is why they are not considered IPOs.  If the market capitalization of this year's non-traded REIT transactions were added to the IPO figure above the market value of newly traded REITs would be much higher.