The video shows the change in REIT earnings, represented as funds from operations, or FFO, over the course of the pandemic. The chart plots the REIT property sectors against their year-end 2019 earnings moving quarterly through the years until the first quarter of 2021.
At the end of the fourth quarter in 2019, FFO was at a record high of $16.8 billion in the fourth quarter. As the pandemic began in the first quarter of 2020 and fully took hold in the second quarter, FFO for almost all property sectors declined, with only industrial never falling below its earnings from the end of 2019. Data centers were quick to recover, increasing 32.6% in the second quarter of 2022 with earnings higher than its 2019 baseline. Infrastructure and self storage recover by the end of 2020.
In the second quarter of 2021, FFO for the industry surpasses year-end 2019 FFO with residential finally passing its 2019 baseline. Most recently, in the first quarter of 2022, Retail REITs pass their year-end 2019 FFO, and FFO for equity REITs is up 9.6% to a new record high of over $18 billion.