I heard from a friend that office rentals have been holding up reasonably well in KL in general, but to be honest, I didn't do any more checking beyond that. Given the market volatility, I've increased the share of REITs in my portfolio recently for defensive purposes.

Even REITs are falling today. Ouch!

Question for those with significant REIT dividend income and applying for home loan. When calculating gross income for purposes of determining maximum loan facility, did the mortgage officer apply any haircut when consering your REIT dividend income?

Just sharing my own experience and thinking for your consideration. I hold shares in six of the REITS to diversify my risk in this sector. My purpose of holding REITs is for stable dividend income and also I consider myself a risk averse investor. Therefore, it makes sense to me to hold a bit of everything as I don't want to face a sudden steep reduction of income when there is a loss of key anchor tenants. Its my own way of self diversification and the purchase cost has a negligible impact on your overall return if you buy in bigger tranches, say at least MYR5K at a time.

Surely all they do is just add up the total cash dividend each person is suppose to receive and divide by the price on the dividend date to see how many new units to give you. No fractional units, so round down the units and you get the excess in cash.

Just spent some time reading parts of the Pavillion prospectus. The valuation of the mall (3.4 billion) feels pretty inflated to me when there are so many reports indicating that the high end property market has peaked. The sellers are asking us to pay for something now that was valued in June 2011 based on transactions carried out when the property market was very hot. Hmm... are there any real estate agents here that can comment on whether the RM2,554psft valuation for prime retail space is inflated?

Just did a returns analysis of my stock portfolio. For 2012, it appears that my REITS are pretty much tracking the rise in KLCI with a total return of about 5%. For 2011, my REITS returned about 7% - pretty awesome considering the KLCI was flat for the year.

I would say that 2012 has so far been a bullish year for the stock market. So its good to know that REITS, as a defensive stock, has so far been tracking the bullish market since 1.1.2012.

Yup, I did. Only 1 round of dividends received so far in 2012, so the total return up to 31.12.2012 will likely be much higher if the REIT prices hold up.