- Business
- ALPS Active REIT ETF (REIT) is an actively managed exchange-traded fund that seeks total return through dividends and capital appreciation by investing at least 80% of its net assets in publicly traded equity securities of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs); it primarily holds common equity securities of U.S. REITs, with a portion allocated to publicly traded common equity of U.S. real estate operating companies (not structured as REITs), publicly traded preferred equity of U.S. REITs and real estate operating companies, and cash and cash equivalents. The fund targets securities across diversified REIT sectors including data centers (e.g., Equinix Inc., Digital Realty Trust Inc.), healthcare (e.g., Welltower Inc., Omega Healthcare Investors Inc.), industrial (e.g., Prologis Inc., First Industrial Realty Trust Inc.), retail (e.g., Simon Property Group Inc., Realty Income Corp.), residential (e.g., AvalonBay Communities Inc., Camden Property Trust), self-storage (e.g., Public Storage, CubeSmart), and gaming/hospitality (e.g., VICI Properties Inc., Host Hotels & Resorts Inc.). Issued by SS&C ALPS Advisors, Inc. (formerly ALPS Advisors, Inc.), with sub-advisory services provided by GSI Capital Advisors LLC since inception, the fund employs a bottom-up, quality-biased, relative value investment process led by portfolio managers Nicholas Tannura and Julia Pence to identify mispriced real estate opportunities.
Launched on February 25, 2021, and listed on Nasdaq, the ETF is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, the base of SS&C ALPS Advisors, which registered as an investment management company in 2006 and has grown through acquisitions including Red Rocks Capital in 2015 (consolidated in 2023). The fund benchmarks against the S&P US REIT Index, maintains a total operating expense ratio of 0.68%, and as of late 2025 manages approximately $44-45 million in assets under management with around 30-31 holdings. It serves investors seeking U.S. real estate exposure in a low-cost, tax-efficient ETF structure, with quarterly distributions and a trailing twelve-month yield near 3%.
In recent developments, the fund transitioned from a semi-transparent to a non-transparent structure using the Blue Tractor model on August 22, 2023, enhancing its active management flexibility amid market volatility. It has demonstrated outperformance relative to mutual fund and ETF real estate peers over three years ending mid-2025, with annualized excess returns of 106 basis points against peer medians and 86 basis points against the MSCI US IMI Real Estate 25/50 Index. Institutional interest grew in 2025, including Envestnet Asset Management Inc. increasing its stake by 96.5% in Q2 to 16,688 shares valued at $439,000, and new positions by firms like Farther Finance Advisors LLC.