Growing interest among individual i...

Growing interest among individual investors and institutions in REITs (real estate investment trusts) is evidenced by dint of the recent conversion of the former privately held Kimco Corp. into Kimco Realty Corp., an equity REIT whose public offering in succession the New York Stock Exchange has raised more than $120 million.

Given the dire obstacles to obtaining credit in today's market, the ability to access capital was a first note of the scale factor driving the Kimco conversion. "We saw the public equity markets as a vehicle for obtaining a highly stable source of capital to continue growing our business