Intelligent REITs in the information age

This paper examines the emergence of the latest powerful structure of the Intelligent Real Estate Investment Trust (iREIT) model: when real estate investment model is empowered by information technology online platform. iREIT is known as a revolutionary and controversial topic since it was born in terms of breaking the 'glassing ceiling' that real estate investment became no longer exclusively reserved for high net worth individuals. The barrier of entry is significantly reduced to $1000 USD for anybody who would like to diversify his/her investment portfolio. The originality and invaluable contributions of this paper are twofold: (a) a Trend Following (TF) trading strategy is applied to test the possibility and sustainability of 13% annual returns as some iREIT companies stated. Two modifications on TF are tested here, one is to extend TF over multiple markets, the other is to combine the use of forecasting tool that would predict a future trend. TF would give the insights on buying or selling decisions based on the moving trend patterns. (b) Assess the trend profitability from Top5 Asian countries, verify whether the best practices of the diversified real estate investment portfolio for iREIT exists, hence to explore the possibility of auto-investment over iREIT in future.