REIT Replay: Industrial REIT stocks soar during week ended Oct. 17

Share prices for US industrial real estate investment trusts jumped during the week ended Oct. 17 following strong third-quarter earnings releases for Prologis Inc., Rexford Industrial Realty Inc. and First Industrial Realty Trust Inc.

Discussions on recent earnings calls from those three REITs indicate that industrial tenants have become more desensitized to tariff headlines and are moving forward with long-term leasing decisions. First Industrial stated touring activity related to new leasing grew in the third quarter, with tenant decision-making on the whole remaining deliberate even as the uncertainty around tariffs continued.

Additionally, Rexford Industrial Realty reported 3.3 million square feet of leasing activity in the third quarter, the highest leasing quarter in the REIT's history. The REIT noted that it is seeing incremental demand across a wide range of industry sectors, with pent-up demand playing a role in the REIT's record leasing activity in the quarter.

The Dow Jones US Real Estate Industrial index jumped 9.73% over the recent week, the largest gain of all Dow Jones US real estate property sector indexes. The self-storage and healthcare REIT indexes followed next with increases of 4.85% and 4.69%, respectively.

The broader Dow Jones Equity All REIT index closed the recent week up 3.46%, compared to a smaller 1.56% gain for the S&P 500.

Additionally, the top five performing REIT stocks for the week all came from the industrial sector. Prologis, the largest industrial REIT, recorded a share-price gain of 11.55% for the week, the largest increase of all US REIT stocks with at least $200 million in market capitalization. Rexford Industrial Realty and First Industrial Realty Trust followed next in the second and third spots with share-price increases of 11.18% and 9.65%, respectively. Terreno Realty Corp. and EastGroup Properties Inc. meanwhile rounded out the top-five with share-price increases of 9.01% and 8.27%, respectively.

On the other end, multifamily REIT Aimco's share price plummeted 28.27% over the week. Recently IPO'd data center REIT Fermi Inc. followed next with a share-price decline of 7.15% over the week, while office REIT SL Green Realty Corp. rounded out the bottom-three performing REIT stocks with a share-price decline of 4.68%.