NEW YORK CITY-Despite a sluggish second-half, the nation’s biggest REITs had a strong 2011—and 2012 is looking even better. Panelists at the Practising Law Institute’s “REIT and Real Estate M&A and Restructurings” conference on Jan. 12 said mergers and acquisitions—both public and private—will be a big part of 2012’s total activity.

From large-scale public-to-public mergers in the industrial and healthcare sectors to major private-to-public acquisitions as private assets and companies continued to undergo ownership changes, PLI says overall deal volume hit the $70 million mark in 2011. The year marked a range of deals, including the ProLogis/AMB merger, Blackstone buying out Centro and Ventas acquiring Artia Properties.

However, Matthew Lustig, vice chairman of US investment banking and head of real estate at Lazard, said mergers and acquisitions will be “more active” from the previous year. "They [public companies in certain sectors] will continue because they have a dramatically lower cost of capital than the private companies, and there is less competition to buy private companies,” he said. Lustig said there is a growing dichotomy between large well-capitalized companies and smaller less-capitalized companies in the public market.