The earnings, measured by funds from operations per share, were based ondata from 111 REITs and publicly traded real estate companies. The combined common equity market capitalization of the reporting companies at the end of December2000 was $122.3 billion, representing 77% of the total industry.

On average, FFO per share rose 8.7% when compared with the same periodlast year. Comparable year-over-year FFO-per-share growth for the thirdquarter averaged 10.2%.

Earnings growth for other large publicly tradedreal estate operating companies--which generally do not reportoperating performance in terms of FFO, but by earnings per share--alsoslowed. On average, REOCs reported year-over-year earnings per sharegrowth of 22.1% in the fourth quarter compared with a revised 29%percent rate in the third quarter.

Although industry-wide performance dipped slightly, earnings growthremained in double digits. Growth for all companies combined slowed to10.6% in the fourth quarter compared with the same period last year.Third quarter year-over-year earnings growth per share was 12.2%.

NAREIT officials said 80% of surveyed companies met or beatfourth-quarter earnings expectations, a figure they note is consistentwith earlier quarters. According to NAREIT, 46% of the companiesexceeded fourth-quarter earnings expectations, while 34% met theirearnings estimates.

Among equity REITs, the strongest performance wasreported by the office, mixed industrial/office and manufactured homessectors, with each reporting average FFO per share growth at or above10%. The regional mall, apartment and industrial sectors also hadrelatively strong FFO per share growth rates on average, according toNAREIT figures.