Financialization or Modernization? REIT Ownership, Amenities, and Reinvestment in Supply-Constrained Markets.

This paper investigates whether Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) ownership affects multifamily rental housing affordability and quality in supply-constrained gateway cities. Using a novel dataset of rental listings in the Greater Toronto Area, matched with over 700,000 building permits classified via Large Language Models (LLMs), we test for rent premiums associated with REITs.