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First Real Estate Investment Trust
First REIT owns hospitals and nursing homes across Asia and earns rent from the healthcare operators who run them.
First REIT is a healthcare landlord. It buys hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical buildings, then rents them out to the companies that actually run the care inside. The tenants pay rent, and that rent is what gets passed to unitholders as dividends.
The business began with a twist: its founding assets were hospitals in Indonesia, sold and leased back to the healthcare operator Siloam, which is part of the Lippo group. That sale-and-leaseback model is the engine — the operator gets cash out of its buildings, and the REIT gets a steady income stream. Over time it added properties in Singapore and hospitals in Indonesia, and it made a push into Japan, buying nursing homes there to spread its bets beyond one country. The catch is concentration. Its rental income leans heavily on a small number of tenants, and the sponsor's ties to the Lippo group mean the REIT's fortunes are tangled with those of its main tenant and its parent. When the Indonesian rupiah weakened in 2020 and the pandemic hit hospital operators, the trust's income took a visible knock, a reminder that currency moves and tenant troubles flow straight to distributions. Growth has also been slow because expansion depends on acquiring new buildings, and hospital deals in Asia are not cheap.
For investors, the appeal is simple: a high dividend yield backed by buildings people need regardless of the economy. The risk is equally simple — a landlord with few tenants and currency exposure is only as steady as those tenants.
Saved answer · last researched 12 Nov 2026