iShares Dow Jones US Real Estate (ETF) (AMEX:IYR)

Kinzo (99.37) Submitted: 2/22/2008 2:02:09 PM : Start Price: $51.78 IYR Score: +15.31

I think people have realized that the housing/real estate market boom is very much over. Although the financials have suffered drastically from subprime, I think the real estate market can go nowhere but up from here.

equalfuture (33.46) Submitted: 2/8/2008 12:47:45 PM : Start Price: $53.06 IYR Score: +12.38

re

abitare (99.70) Submitted: 1/12/2008 8:11:36 PM : Start Price: $53.07 IYR Score: -20.71

You know why this will underperform and if you don't know you will find out soon enough.

gaiachild (96.32) Submitted: 1/10/2008 12:37:06 PM : Start Price: $50.08 IYR Score: -25.10

tdrh

godsmacks1 (57.13) Submitted: 12/27/2007 9:52:41 PM : Start Price: $55.19 IYR Score: -18.66

commercial real estate

rochet5 (53.11) Submitted: 9/21/2007 2:37:56 PM : Start Price: $63.51 IYR Score: -5.89

Real estate boom caused underwriting standards to go down the toilet. Unjustifable cap rates, and growth rates going into commercial properties. Tons of deals with full term IO mortgages is going to leave less to recover when the defaults start rolling in.

IcarusEquity (< 20) Submitted: 9/8/2007 7:57:20 PM : Start Price: $60.29 IYR Score: -7.02

Welcome to the subprime fallout...

Time to buy books on how to purchase foreclosures.

Longer way to fall down.

outersquare (51.97) Submitted: 8/8/2007 5:21:28 AM : Start Price: $60.00 IYR Score: -8.72

need a bigger container

MarkBDow (86.67) Submitted: 5/13/2007 9:17:12 PM : Start Price: $71.21 IYR Score: -6.29

Some just talk about contrarian plays while I like to play them. There may or may not be an overall effect on RE across the country because of the sub-prime lending practices of the past few years. One thing is for sure: there is a fixed amount of real estate available while their is an ever increasing demand in the market.

The sub-prime problem is a sub-prime problem. Sure, there will be pockets across the country where prices will fall, even sharply and perhaps for an extended period of time. However, that will not change the very nature of the overall RE market. There is not a bubble universally in the RE market. There are localized bubbles that will have more or less localized effects, of varied severity and duration, whenever they "pop".

IYR is a well-diversified portfolio and should not be significantly affected by the current woes of sub-prime lenders.

Arbitrash (24.21) Submitted: 4/18/2007 10:34:00 PM : Start Price: $71.75 IYR Score: -9.69

Has been outperforming for several years and believe apparent risks are already priced in.

NetscribeETF (37.64) Submitted: 3/26/2007 5:18:04 AM : Start Price: $71.44 IYR Score: +11.31

The iShares Dow Jones U.S. Real Estate Index Fund invest in the real estate sector of the U.S. equity market as represented by the Dow Jones U.S. Real Estate Index. There has been a slowdown in the growth of United States real GDP along with a cooling housing market since attaining their peak levels. Sales of both new and existing homes have dropped sharply. Inventory of unsold homes has soared, and the number of single-family and multifamily housing starts has fallen.

Solid growth prospects rest with the companies that engage in land development involving properties in supply constrained major metropolitan markets. However places like Florida and Atlanta that have lower barriers to entry might suffer from oversupply and overbuilding due to cooling of prices. Residential real estate market is expected to remain soft as opposed to the commercial real estate market. Reflecting the same, as of February end the strongest performers have been the retail and shopping mall REITs with a return of 10.9% and 14.4% respectively with worst performance put forth by home financing REITS with a negative return of 12.2%.

Analyzing the past returns of the fund, it has put up an excellent show with average annualized return for the past five years at 22.56%. Apart from this it has improved the expense ratio from 0.60% to 0.48%. However there is a general feeling that the individual components of the fund are trading above its fair value with an exorbitant price to earnings ratio or a high price to book ratio. The ETF seems to be a good candidate for the long term. It looks better to avoid the fund for the time being as there are much better and cheaper options in the category