2021 Top Residential REITs
At the end of March, Multifamily Executive released its rankings for the Top Residential Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) for 2021. Multifamily Executive creates the rankings of both publicly listed and private REITs, based on their online reputation assessment scores (ORA). They have developed this list for the last seven years and it shows the strength of the top operators in the multifamily real estate market. These multifamily REITs are some of the largest owners of apartment properties in the US and they help set the standard for property operations.
For the second year in a row, Preferred Apartment REIT is the top multifamily REIT for the year. Below is a table showing the top multifamily REITs for 2021 as well as their ORA scores. Their rankings from 2020 are also provided for comparison.
| Rank | REIT | Dec. 2021 ORA | 2020 ORA Rank |
| 1 | Preferred Apartment Communities | 85.02 | 1 |
| 2 | BSR | 82.08 | 4 |
| 3 | Camden Property Trust | 80.23 | 5 |
| 4 | AvalonBay Communities | 79.52 | 2 |
| 5 | MAA | 77.33 | 3 |
| 6 | AIMCO/AIR | 70.54 | 6 |
| 7 | Nexpoint Residential Trust ** | 70.14 | 10 |
| 8 | Bluerock Residential Growth REIT* | 69.28 | 8 |
| 9 | Equity Residential | 69.19 | 11 |
| 10 | Independent Realty Trust | 67.65 | 12 |
| 11 | Cottonwood Residential | 67.56 | 9 |
| 12 | Centerspace | 64.78 | 13 |
| 13 | Essex Property Trust | 61.22 | 15 |
| 14 | UDR | 59.40 | 14 |
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