Eve Maddock-Jones, Investment Week, 11 August 2025:
The UK real estate investment trust (REITs) sector has undergone a rampage of M&A activity in recent years, leaving a “leaner” sector and clients with fewer choices, but the upsides of greater, more efficient liquidity available.
According to data from TIME Investments, which runs several hybrid property funds, the number of REITs on the London Stock Exchange has gone from 83 in 2019 to 40 as of July 2025.
Much of this was down to mergers and takeovers between formerly rivalled vehicles. Tritax Big Box acquired UK Commercial Property REIT in 2024, with the former now coming to the end of a major bidding war with private equity firm Blackstone to take over Warehouse REIT (a clash Tritax has been outbid on at the time of publishing).
LondonMetric carried out a spree of takeovers in the past two years, acquiring CT Property Trust (2023), LXi REIT (2024) and Urban Logistics REIT (June 2025).
There have been some take-private deals as well, with Balanced Commercial Property trust and Tritax EuroBox being taken off the listed market in 2024.
This leaves investors with fewer options to choose from overall, which TIME argued can be a good thing..
Richard Williams, senior analyst at QuotedData, echoed these efficiency points, adding that it could overall lead to higher earnings and dividend progression in the remaining trusts.
However, while he “applauded” the REIT on REIT mergers that had kept the firms public, he added: “I do worry that as the sector bounces back from the doldrums and investors look to allocate more to it, they will be left with few options. This is especially true if they want to gain exposure to certain micro themes in sub-sectors.”..
He stated that “gaping holes” now exist in the REIT sector, and the residential REIT sector is now “almost non-existent”.
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