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Investors Real Estate (IRET) Accomplishes MOB Portfolio Sale

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Investors Real Estate Trust (IRET - Free Report) — better known as IRET — has made concerted efforts to transmute into a focused multi-family company. As part of this, the company recently substantially accomplished the sale of its medical office building or “MOB” portfolio. Particularly, it announced that it has disposed 25 properties for around $367.7 million.

Notably, in November 2017, the company announced entering into a purchase-and-sale agreement for the sale of its entire healthcare portfolio. This comprised 28 healthcare assets and another commercial property which was occupied by a healthcare tenant.

However, before the closure, one of the properties was taken out of the sale deal, additional closing conditions were attached to three properties, while purchase price of the rest of the properties were adjusted. If those additional closing conditions are satisfied over the next six months, the IRET anticipates completion of sale of the three properties for around $32.4 million.

The move is a strategic fit for IRET and the company plans to use the sale proceeds to enhance its multi-family portfolio, including in Twin Cities, Denver, as well as other strategic markets. In fact, over the past one and a half year, IRET has been disposing senior housing, commercial, medical office and other non-core properties. With the accomplishment of this sale, the company’s non-core asset dispositions would amount to more than $750 million for this time frame. However, dilutive impact of dispositions on earnings cannot be bypassed in the near term.

As a matter of fact, the U.S. apartment market reported stable rent growth, while occupancy remained healthy in third–quarter 2017, per a study by the real estate technology and analytics firm, RealPage, Inc. (RP). Job formation and checked move-outs for buying homes have acted as catalysts. Also, construction labor shortages and escalating costs have partially helped the industry witness comparatively lesser supply than anticipated earlier.

IRET currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). In the past three months, shares of the company have underperformed industry. While the stock has lost 6.2%, the industry has inched up 0.2% during this period. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



Better-ranked stocks in the REIT space include Ashford Hospitality Prime, Inc. , Lamar Advertising Company (LAMR - Free Report) and Outfront Media Inc. (OUT - Free Report) . All three carry a Zacks Rank of 2 (Buy).

Ashford Hospitality Prime’s Zacks Consensus Estimates for 2017 funds from operations (FFO) per share remained unchanged at $1.61 over the past week. Its share price has increased 3.4% in three months’ time.

Lamar Advertising Company’s FFO per share estimates for 2017 have remained unchanged at $4.96 in a month’s time. The stock has gained 7.2% over the past three months.

Outfront Media’s FFO per share estimates for 2017 remained unchanged at $1.98 over the past month. Its shares have lost 5.5% during the past three months.

Note: All EPS numbers presented in this report represent funds from operations (FFO) per share. FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income.


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