Examining personal financial advisors’ knowledge, client recommendations, and personal investments in private real estate and real estate investment trusts (REITs)

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) have gained considerable investment participation and academic research. However, little is known about personal financial advisors’ knowledge, perceived benefits, personal investments, and client recommendations related to public REITs, private REITs, and private real estate investments. This research extends the real estate investment literature by examining all of these unknowns, offering insight into financial advisors’ knowledge of real estate investments, client recommendations, personal investment decisions, and financial institution performance resulting from such knowledge and practices. The results show that financial advisors have moderate levels of knowledge public REITs, private REITs, and private real estate investments. It is further shown that the perceived investment benefits translate into personal investments by financial advisors but not necessarily client recommendations. Specifically, financial advisors’ perceived benefits of private REITs and public REITs were significantly related to client recommendations but private real estate investments were not. The disconnect between personal investment decisions and client recommendations is interesting and may be due to the capital requirements, property management expertise, and risks associated with private real estate investments. The research also showed that only private REIT recommendations were positively associated with financial institution performance.