Earlier this week, ADISA provided detailed comments to NASAA on certain revisions to its Statement of Policy Regarding Real Estate Investment Trusts, proposed by NASAA’s Corporation Finance Section and the Direct Participation Program Project Group. The Section’s purpose in making these proposals is to “keep NASAA Statements of Policy current and to enhance retail investor protections surrounding the officer and sale of non-traded REITs to retail investors.”

ADISA members play an important role in bringing non-correlating, diversifying investments to a significant part of the investing population. Based upon our review of the Proposal, ADISA believes that the Section should engage in additional dialogue and review information that ADISA is providing and will provide in the future, which information we believe offers differing perspectives on and, in some cases, a counternarrative to that relied upon by the Section in drafting the Proposal. We believe that, under the circumstances, the Section should take the time to fully assess this additional information, consider the alternative perspectives offered by such information and either defer or review the Proposal prior to putting its elements to NASAA members for their consideration. To that end, we believe that the Section should put the Proposal on hold while it conducts a detailed review of this information.

NASAA’s Proposal, as explicated in the Statement, relies upon a wide range of expressed concerns, concerns that ADISA believes can be addressed in ways that are more narrowly tailored or in ways that operate differently than what has been proposed. In our comment letter, a number of key points from the NASAA Statement were set forth, along with alternative solutions or approaches that would incorporate a full understanding of the data and associated facts.

The letter was signed by ADISA’s Legislative & Regulatory Committee Co-Chairs John Grady, ABR Dynamic Funds; and Catherine Bowman, The Bowman Law Firm; who helped draft it, along with Deborah Froling, Kutak Rock; John Harrison, ADISA; and Thomas Rosenfield and Anne Darconte, both of HillStaffer.

View the letter in its entirety here.

Read NASAA’s full Proposal here.