Skip navigation or skip to main content.
CIT

Global Real Estate Securities CIT

Our U.S. and Global REIT Collective Investment Trusts with SEI utilize the same underlying investment strategy as our institutional products. For more information or offering documents please contact Sarah Honold at .

A focus on high-quality businesses

At Duff & Phelps, we have been managing institutional REIT portfolios since 1995, applying a rigorous fundamental research discipline that is our hallmark. We focus on listed securities as opposed to private real estate, which provides the liquidity and transparency of the public equity markets and, over the last full real estate cycle, provided a performance premium, on average, compared with private real estate funds1. Our investment philosophy is based on the belief that owning high-quality listed owners and operators will produce superior risk-adjusted returns. Focusing on this investment profile, we believe, offers the investment characteristics that institutional investors have historically sought. 

We conduct intensive fundamental research, spending considerable time analyzing managements’ capabilities and the quality of firm assets in order to identify candidates we determine are the most attractive in the listed REIT universe. In-depth cash flow modeling based on detailed ten year projections allows us to make reasoned judgements and invest in those securities we believe have the best chance of producing attractive risk-adjusted returns. We apply these disciplines to each of our listed real estate strategies.

We view real estate as a core building block for most portfolios. It offers the potential for the following benefits:

Lower Correlations

Real estate typically does not move in lock-step with stocks and bonds.

Income Stability

Because rentals are contractual revenues, they have historically been able to produce stable cash flows and consistent income.

Market Inefficiencies

Active management can add value by capitalizing on inefficiencies within small- and mid-cap names.

Lower Volatility

True owner/operator companies have delivered attractive risk-adjusted returns and offered durable cash flows.

Our Investment Process

Process - Real Estate

1Source: NAREIT, REITs: Real Estate With a Return Premium, 2015.  Based on U.S. stock exchange-listed equity REITs, as measured by the FTSE NAREIT Equity REITs Index, and data from NCREIF and the Townsend Group measuring the performance of private equity real estate funds available to U.S. institutional investors over the last full real estate cycle (from the third quarter of 1990 through the second quarter of 2008).

SEI Trust Company (the “Trustee”) serves as the Trustee of the Trust and maintains ultimate fiduciary authority over the management of, and the investments made, in the Trust.  The Trust is part of a Collective Investment Trust (the “Trust”) operated by the Trustee.  The Trustee is a trust company organized under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and a wholly owned subsidiary of SEI Investments Company (SEI).