U.S. REITs seeking billions in IPOs, follow-ons

Angelo Gordon and AllianceBernstein were among the nine fund managers the U.S. Treasury recently chose to run the so-called public-private investment program, known as PPIP, that could buy up $40 billion of toxic securities from banks eager to clean up their balance sheets.

The new IPO filings come on the heels of a flood of follow-on offerings by existing property REITs. Those companies have raised more than $15.2 billion in follow-on offerings this year in a bid to lower debt levels, according to Thomson Reuters data. That is up 150 percent from a year ago.

As investors have been reassured REITs have been properly recapitalized, REIT stocks have rebounded 50 percent from lows hit in March, Smith said.

"REITs were trading at significant discounts because of the market's view that they did not have access to capital, debt or equity," Smith said.

Still, that recent performance is no guarantee the REIT IPOs will be met enthusiastically by investors.

In June, Invesco Mortgage Capital (IVR.N)-- owned by PPIP manager Invesco (IVZ.N) -- slashed the size of its IPO by more than half, settling for $170 million.

It may take some time to know just how welcoming investors will prove to be for the new REITs -- none of the REIT IPOs in pipeline has set a pricing date yet.

(Reporting by Phil Wahba and Ilaina Jonas; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)