What does a real estate investment trust mean?

Real estate investment trust is a kind of trust fund that collects the funds of a specific majority of investors and is managed by a special investment institution by issuing income certificates, and distributes the comprehensive investment income to investors in proportion. Different from the purely private nature of trust in China, REITs in the international sense are equivalent to funds in nature, with a few private placements, but most of them are public offerings. REITs can operate in a closed mode or be listed and traded, similar to open-end funds and closed-end funds in China.