Oman’s Capital Market Authority (CMA) is planning to issue a set of regulations for listing Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT), reported the Times of Oman on Wednesday.

The CMA’s Executive President, Abdullah bin Salim al Salmi, stated the draft regulations were already in place and the authority would be looking into applications to launch REITs even before the new regulations were announced.

REITs are funds set up to invest directly into real estate. They usually are accessible even for investors without a lot of capital and are mostly bound to hand over as much as 90% of its net profits to its investors.

The funds are viewed as a good concept to involve smaller investors in the funding of real estate projects and are considered a promising venue for growth. Recently the concept has become more prominent in the Middle East with REITs already on the UAE’s market for some time and Saudi Arabia has also recently introduced such funds.