Spanish SOCIMI (REIT) Funds and Efficiency of the Real Estate Capital Market

Broadly understood market efficiency is defined in various ways. A market which is efficient from the point of view of allocation offers a possibility to raise capital to those participants who guarantee the highest rate of return on the investments made. A market which is efficient from the transactional point of view offers fast access to it and low cost of transactions. On a market efficient in the informational sense, the prices of assets fully reflect available information on them. The real estate private investment market is imperfect,inflexible, unorganized and inefficient. To make the real estate market attractive to investors, on developed financial markets legislators allow the functioning of specialist funds of REIT type. They are an example of advisedly applied economic policy which, for example, provides for the reduction of tax burdens upon the fulfillment of specific requirements to meet an economically significant function. When observing the Spanish real estate market in crisis, we can notice changes in respect of information efficiency of indirect investment market, arising from the introduction of SOCIMI funds to the capital market. A qualitative analysis of this programme enables the verification of the research hypothesis that the introduction of REIT type funds to the capital market improves the effectiveness of this market. An additional premise to write this article is to start a discussion on the possibility to implement analogous solutions in Poland, with the expectation of positive effects of their introduction.