The Determinants of the Debt Maturity Decision for Real Estate Investment Trusts

Abstract

This research uses the maturity of incremental bond issues and the weighted-average maturity of all outstanding debt and tests various theories from the corporate debt maturity literature to discover if real estate investment trust (REIT) debt maturity is influenced by liquidity risk, asymmetric information, personal taxes, and agency problems. The findings reveal that there is little to no evidence for the liquidity and asymmetric information hypotheses; however, there is evidence that personal taxes influence the maturity of REIT incremental debt issues, and agency problems play a role in determining the incremental and average debt maturity of REITs