Two REITs Find IPO Climate Welcoming

Real estate investment trusts remain a viable rate-cut play and perhaps not coincidentally, two of them made their debut as publicly traded companies Wednesday.

American Financial Realty Trust (AFR Quote) and Maguire Properties (MGP Quote) each raised nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars in newly priced IPOs.

American Financial, the brainchild of one of the inventors of mortgage-backed bonds, sold 56 million shares at $12.50 each, the upper end of its range, for proceeds of $700 million. Meanwhile, Maguire Properties sold 36.5 million shares at $19 each, the low end of its range, also for $700 million. It was the first time that two IPOs came to market on the same day since Vistacare (VSTA Quote) and Commercial Capital Bancorp (CCBI Quote) last December. ...