Graduation Year
2026
Date of Submission
12-2025
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Economics
Reader 1
Julio Garín
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
2025 Aryan Kaila
Abstract
Existing research on real estate mergers has largely focused on REIT acquirers in isolation, typically finding near-zero bidder reactions in short event windows. There is little work that directly compares REITs with publicly listed real estate services (RES) firms that operate in the same market cycles and conditions but follow different business models. Using a transaction-level dataset of 137 U.S. mergers from 1994 to 2024, this study applies event-study methodology and cross-sectional regression analysis to investigate whether equity markets respond differently to acquisitions undertaken by REITs and real estate services firms. The estimates show that REIT acquirers experience notably more negative announcement-window abnormal returns than their RES counterparts, and that REITs also display significantly negative returns when evaluated in isolation. Although the results are concentrated in short-horizon windows and do not speak to long-term outcomes, they point to systematic differences in how organizational form shapes investor reactions to real estate acquisitions.
Recommended Citation
Kaila, Aryan, "Short-Window Market Reactions to Real Estate M&A: A Comparative Event Study of REITs and Real Estate Services Firms" (2026). CMC Senior Theses. 4284.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/4284
