This exploratory paper addresses the driving forces of real estate investment trusts (REITs). Aftera concise overview of the history of REITs in the USA, the success conditions of retail REITsare addressed by investigating the relationship between local retail rents and a set of localexplanatory factors. A sequential regression method is deployed to identify the most prominent,statistically significant variables and to create a ranking of most promising metropolitan areasfrom an investor's perspective.