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The real-estate investment trusts Mack-Cali and Apartment Income have seen millions of dollars of stock purchases recently.

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Two real-estate investment trusts have seen millions of dollars in stock purchases lately, even as both are outpacing the market this year.

Shares of

Mack-Cali Realty

(ticker: CLI), an office and multifamily properties REIT, and

Apartment Investment and Management

(AIV), which focuses on the multifamily market, have soared 26.2% and 18.9%, respectively, so far in 2021. The

S&P 500 index

has only managed to rise 7.0% year to date.

Investment firm Bow Street paid $5.3 million on March 25 for 345,963 Mack-Cali shares, an average price of $15.52 each. This transaction follows Bow Street’s $6.4 million purchases over March 4 and 5 of a total of 442,000 shares, a per-share average price of $14.51.

Bow Street didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A year ago, Bow Street was calling for the ouster of Mack-Cali CEO
Michael DeMarco,
and the investment firm was in a dispute regarding its representatives on the REIT’s board. On June 10, 2020, however, Mack-Cali agreed to raise its board’s size to 15 directors from 11, and to seat Akiva Katz, a Bow Street co-founder and managing partner. In late July 2020, Mack-Cali announced DeMarco’s departure.

This month, after the close of trading March 19, Mack-Cali stock slipped after the REIT announced that its dividend would remain suspended for the rest of 2021. It last paid a quarterly dividend of 20 cents a share on July 24, 2020.

Apartment Investment director
Terry Considine
 paid $3.4 million from March 17 through 24 for a total of 600,000 shares, a per-share average price of $5.72. Considine purchased Apartment Investment stock through his retirement account. He now owns 6.3 million shares when including partnership units and stock options.

Considine is CEO of

Air Communities

(AIRC), a REIT focused on apartment communities.

Apartment Investment didn’t respond to a request to make Considine available for comment. Air Communities declined to make him available for comment.

Inside Scoop is a regular Barron’s feature covering stock transactions by corporate executives and board members—so-called insiders—as well as large shareholders, politicians, and other prominent figures. Due to their insider status, these investors are required to disclose stock trades with the Securities and Exchange Commission or other regulatory groups.

Write to Ed Lin at edward.lin@barrons.com and follow @BarronsEdLin.

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