“The REITs are probably just going to sit on the sidelines for the dust to settle before they do the math and make the decision if an acquisition makes sense,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’ll take some time for the dust to settle to see where REITs stand relative to the broader market and what the implications are for the cost of capital.”

Health-care and single-tenant REITs historically have grown through acquisitions to boost dividends, said Sam Lieber, chief executive officer of Purchase, New York-based Alpine Woods Capital Investors LLC, which manages the Alpine Funds. The return from their acquisitions is the spread between the cost of raising capital and the yield from property purchases. Share- price declines and rising interest rates tend to increase the cost of capital, reducing returns.

“They don’t offer a lot of growth,” Lieber said.

Lease Lengths

Single-tenant and health-care REITs have less flexibility to raise rents because of their lease lengths, which are making other REIT types more appealing to investors. Apartment, industrial and regional-mall landlords are attractive because they have a greater ability to raise rents and grow internally, said Paul Curbo, a portfolio manager in Dallas with Invesco Ltd., which had $752 billion under management as of May.

“Internal growth starts to matter more,” he said in a telephone interview. “We still favor those kinds of companies.”

Even the more desirable REIT types are cutting back on equity sales. This week, UDR Inc., a Highlands Ranch, Colorado- based apartment owner, reduced its 2013 forecast for equity offerings to zero from a previous estimate of as much as $125 million. UDR, whose shares are trading at a discount to what its properties are worth, won’t sell any shares until its stock gets back to at least the company’s net asset value, according to Chief Financial Officer Thomas Herzog.

No Shares

“At current price levels we would not issue shares, but that does not preclude us in the future if our share price were higher,” he said.

REIT shares have gained 5 percent in the past three days as 10-year Treasury yields fell to the lowest in a week. Federal Reserve officials said yesterday that investors may have overreacted to prospects for a reduction in the central bank’s bond-buying program.