For 30 years, Barclays Global Investors has been a formidable investment force. The asset management company created the first index strategy in 1971. By 1978, it had launched the first quantitative active strategy. In 2007, Barclay's is making a concentrated effort to increase its real estate presence by registering five Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) that will follow the FTSE NAREIT Composite Index.

The five funds—iShares FTSE NAREIT Residential Index Fund, iShares FTSE NAREIT Industrial/Office Index Fund, iShares FTSE NAREIT Retail Index Fund, iShares FTSE NAREIT Mortgage REITs Index Fund and iShares FTSE NAREIT Real Estate 50 Index Fund, join a growing number of ETFs that invest in REITs. The current list includes the iShares Cohen & Steers Realty Majors Index Fund (ICF), the Vanguard REIT Index ETF (VNQ), the SPDR Dow Jones Wilshire International Real Estate ETF (RWX), ProShares Ultra Real Estate (URE), ProShares Ultra Short Real Estate (SRS), First Trust S&P REIT Fund (FSR), PowerShares REOT Preferred, Wisdom Tree REIT Sector, and Wisdom Tree International Real Estate.

Jerry Moskowitz, president and managing director of FTSE Americas, says that Barclays Global Investors' introduction of these five ETFs will offer investors a powerful option to increase their portfolios' performance. "REITs are a great way to increase risk-adjusted returns in a diversified stock and bond portfolio, and they have not only become an important part of the institutional portfolio, but the individual investor portfolio, too," he says.