Residential REIT Centerspace: From $107.50 to $60.16 In 12 Months

Shares of residential real estate investment trust (REIT) Centerspace CSR sold with extraordinarily heavy volume and touched a brand new 52-week low. 

Based in Minot, North Dakota, Centerspace is a residential REIT focused on apartment homes. Its properties are found in Minneapolis, Denver and Omaha, Nebraska, among other Midwestern locations.

The company is a smaller type of real estate investment trust with a market capitalization of $933 million. To compare, one of the majors in the field, Prologis Inc, has a market capitalization of $109 billion.

Average daily volume is relatively light at just 106,000 shares. Institutions own about 86% of the Centerspace’s total float. 

This year’s funds from operations (FFO) are negative by 228% and the past five-year FFO growth rate is a positive 32.8%.

The REIT pays a dividend of 4.85%.

Analysts have been revising their opinion of Centerspace downward. For example, on Dec. 14, Janney Montgomery Scott LLC downgraded it from Buy to Neutral. This follows a downgrading on Nov. 23 by Raymond James, which took the REIT from Market Perform to Underperform, and on Nov. 1, Piper Sandler reduced its opinion from Overweight to Neutral with a price target dropped from $85 to $70.

The daily price chart for Centerspace is here:

The shaded red bar that extends above the Dec. 12 price indicates how heavy the selling was — it’s the biggest volume bar on the nine-month chart. It’s a bearish look when the price trades below the downtrending 50-day moving average (the blue line) and well below the downtrending 200-day moving average (the red line). The relative strength indicator (RSI) below the price chart may be suggesting a positive divergence.

The weekly price chart looks like this:

At the beginning of this year, Centerspace traded at $107.50 and can be purchased now for $60.16. From the peak price to the current price, that’s a loss in value of 44%. The 50-week moving average has turned unmistakably downward, and the REIT is trading below its 200-week moving average. 

The steady rise in interest rates undertaken by the Federal Reserve this year is negatively affecting real estate investment trusts such as Centerspace.

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Charts courtesy of StockCharts