The Story of the Monkeys Who Started a Real Estate Investment Trust

[Note: this is the 3rd of 3 monkey stories I've written so far.  This one is inspired by recent news stories of small businesses getting asked to shuffle along by different REITs in Halifax, Canada.  This week I also watched "Generation Screwed" which aired on CBC's The National's "Bottom Line" which gave some inspiration for part of the story, which is totally made-up.  Here is part one which aired Dec 3rd, and part two which aired this week. 

I've written blog posts about the REIT topic, as well as the affordable housing crisis, over the past 2 months, but writing monkey stories is much more fun.  I do believe this story could have an alternate happy ending where all the monkeys in the forest form "Ethical REITs" and create better opportunities for their kids]


Once upon a time, in the Central Forest, there lived a group of monkeys who spent a lot of time thinking about how they could get more bananas.

One day these monkeys met for fruit punch and banana cake, to talk about ideas for getting more bananas.

One of the monkeys, named Cartwheel, had an idea.  

"I know!" said Cartwheel to the other monkeys, "We could collect bananas from all sorts of monkeys from all of the forests, and use these bananas to buy up trees that other monkeys rent for their homes or monkey businesses.  Then we can collect the rent, pay a few bananas back to the monkeys that gave us their bananas, but also take bananas for ourselves and buy up more trees!"

"OOK OOK OOK OOK OOK!!" said all of the monkeys, nodding their heads, thumping their chests and jumping up and down in agreement.  

One monkey said "That is a GOOD idea Cartwheel!! So many monkeys and monkey businesses need to pay rent, so why not get their bananas!"

Another monkey said "Yes! And it will be an excellent way to make sure that we all have enough bananas for when we retire from our jobs! We will all need to collect pension money one day.  This thing will help us make sure that we will be able to do that!!  What shall we call this glorious thing, Cartwheel?"

"Well" said Cartwheel. "Trees are Real Estate. And we are investing bananas.  And we want monkeys to trust us with their bananas to invest. And the trees are in the forest.  So how about we call this glorious thing the 'Monkey Forest Real Estate Investment Trust?'"

"EEEK EEEK EEEK AAAACKK OOOK EEEEECK AAAAKK!!!" exclaimed all of the monkeys at the meeting. 

"It is a PERFECT name!! We love it!!"  said all the monkeys, jumping up and down thumping their chests.

"Monkey Forest Real Estate Investment Trust! Monkey Forest Real Estate Investment Trust!!!"  they all chanted in between choruses of "OOOK OOOK OOOK and EEECK AAACK AAACK"

All of the monkeys gobbled up the rest of the banana cake in excitement, swilled down the fruit punch and hurried home to tell their spouses.

"Monkey Forest Real Estate Investment Trust is going to make us RICH!"  They said to their spouses when they got back to their trees.  "OOOK OOK OOK It will help us make sure we can help our kids go to Monkey University!"

Time went on and this group of monkeys from the Central Forest did start the Monkey Forest Real Estate Investment Trust.

All of the monkeys agreed that Cartwheel should be the "Chief Monkey" of the Monkey Forest Real Estate Investment Trust (MFREIT for short).

Cartwheel was an excellent Chief Monkey.  He gathered up bananas from all sorts of monkeys and started buying up lots of trees.

"This is such an excellent idea!" the other monkeys kept saying.  "So many monkeys pay rent, why not pay rent to our MFREIT!  We're going to make so many bananas it isn't even funny!" 

The monkeys hired other monkeys to collect rent from all of the monkeys and monkey businesses that rented trees from them.  There were a lot of bananas coming in!

"This is working out splendidly" said Cartwheel at the meetings.  "MFREIT is buying up lots of trees.  We are making lots of bananas for our investors.  In fact,  any investor who gave us 100 bananas at the beginning of this year, now has 120 bananas.  That is an increase of 20 per cent!  That is an excellent investment!"

"20 percent!! 20 percent!! OOOK OOK OOOK OOK" all of the monkeys chorused.  "20 extra bananas for 100 bananas is 20 percent!!!!  That IS a SPLENDID Investment!!! OOOK OOK OOK!!!"

Word quickly spread through the forest that MFREIT was delivering a 20 percent return, so soon lots of monkeys, including monkeys in charge of pension funds decided it was a good idea to give their extra bananas to MFREIT, in order to make sure that they would have plenty of bananas later in life when they would be retired from their jobs.

More time passed, and led by Cartwheel, the monkeys of MFREIT bought more and more trees.  They bought giant trees full of apartments, and clusters of trees that contained many monkey businesses in shopping malls.

It was a lot of work!   So Cartwheel and the other monkeys in charge felt that it was only fair that they kept enough bananas for themselves in order to afford giant tree-mansions, expensive suits, fancy cars, and water-skiing cruises.

Giant tree-mansions, expensive suits, fancy cars and water-skiing cruises all cost a lot of bananas.  So the monkeys in charge of MFREIT would make sure that the monkeys collecting bananas from tenants would raise the rents as often as they could.

"But I can't pay this much rent!! OOOK OOOK OOOOK" some of the monkeys and monkey business owners would say.  The monkeys and monkey business owners who would receive these rent increases were often very alarmed!

Whenever this happened, the monkey agent in charge of MFREIT would say "I am sorry monkey, but if you can't pay more rent, then you will have to gather up all of your things and find another tree to move to.  I am so sorry, this isn't my tree you know.  I just work for MFREIT."

"MFREIT?" Some monkeys would say, unaware that MFREIT had bought their tree.  "What is that?"

"Monkey Forest Real Estate Investment Trust.  Monkey Forest Real Estate Investment Trust helps lots of monkeys in the forest, you know." the monkey agent would say.

"Oh." the monkeys would say, thinking maybe MFREIT stood for something else.  And then these monkeys would either have to figure out how to pay more rent, or else move from the tree they were renting.

MFREIT still managed to buy more and more trees, and even started building massive tree-apartment complexes and malls because they knew they could rent these spaces out to giant businesses that would pay a lot of rent!!

"OOOK OOK OOK!! 20 percent!!!"  The monkeys would chorus at their meetings.  "OOOK We MUST keep making 20 percent!!!"

And so the monkey agents were instructed to do things such as tell the owners of monkey businesses that they had to move their business.

"Why?? I've always paid my rent!" The monkey business owners would say.  "All of my customers are used to coming here, where am I supposed to go?"

"Well don't blame me," the monkey agent would say, "I just work for MFREIT.  MFREIT is important.  MFREIT helps lots of monkeys.  MFREIT needs to make a lot of bananas and there are many big businesses from the Southern Forest that can pay much bigger rent than you can.  So you need to go."

"Wow." The monkey business owners would say "you don't seem to be a good company."

"Oh yes we're a good company" the agent from MFREIT would then say "Every year we raise bananas for monkeys in need by having events where we hang from our tails from tall trees for long periods of time.  It is dangerous so people give us lots of bananas to give to charity.  We are a very good company.  OOOK OOOK OOK."

More time passed, and the monkeys who started MFREIT had gotten older.  These monkeys had gotten so old that they were thinking about retirement.  They were able to send their kids to Monkey University, but after their kids finished Monkey University, their kids were having a hard time finding jobs and places to live.  Not only that, Monkey University had become very expensive so a lot of them had big student loans and owed many, many bananas to the Bank of Monkeys (BMO).

"OOOK OOK OOOK" some of the older monkeys would say to eachother at work "I don't understand our kids.  They live in our basement.  OOOK when I was their age I was working a good job.  I had my own tree."

It was a big problem!! 43 percent of adult monkey kids were still living in their parents trees!  It was such a big problem that the Monkey News Network even gathered four very smart panelists together to talk about the problem in a two part series called "What is Wrong With Our Young Monkeys?"

"Monkey parents should just kick their kids out of their trees!" said one panelist.  "When I was their age, I had a job!"

A young monkey called into the show, over its computer, with a video-question.

"Is it possible that MFREIT could be part of why it is so hard for monkey kids to move out of their parents' trees? I mean most of the businesses are giant businesses from the Southern Forest now and they don't pay their employees very much.  Just the minimum amount of bananas per hour.  And it is very expensive to rent a tree, because rents are so expensive now.  Also Monkey University costs many many many more bananas than it would have when you went to Monkey University.  What do you think about that, panelists?"

The panelists, who were all invested in MFREIT for their pensions said:

"OOOK OOK OOK OOOK we think you are a VERY stupid monkey.  We NEED MFREIT to fund our retirement!! How dare you suggest such a thing, stupid monkey?"

The big, white-haired chimpanzee who was leading the discussion was so upset by this question that it took a big poop right into its hand and flung it at the television screen that showed the young monkey asking the question.

"Bad monkey!!" yelled the white-haired chimpanzee towards the television screen that showed the young monkey asking the question, "Shame on you.  Shame.  MFREIT is an excellent company didn't you know they hang upside down from very tall trees once a year to raise bananas for charity?  And they are funding my retirement.  What is wrong with you??"

"Bad, stupid monkey" the other panelists agreed.

And that was the end of that discussion.

More time passed.  The older monkeys had to get used to the younger monkeys living in their trees with them.  It would be okay, they thought, soon they would be retired.  They would cash all of their bananas out of MFREIT and have so many bananas that maybe they could even help their kids find their own tree.

But unfortunately, meanwhile MFREIT had been borrowing more and more bananas from BMO (The Bank of Monkeys) to build bigger, and bigger tree-apartments and shopping malls.

"OOK OOK OOK" Cartwheel would say at meetings "Brand new big tree-apartments and big shopping malls mean big rent!!  There will be lots of bananas for everyone!!"

"OOOK OOK OOK" all the monkeys who worked with Cartwheel would chorus in agreement.

"That is good, Cartwheel, because we need more bananas!" Said the monkey in charge of bananas for the company.   "It has been awhile since monkeys giving us 100 bananas at the beginning of the year would get 120 bananas.  We don't want the monkey investors to stop trusting Monkey Forest Real Estate Investment Trust!" 

Unfortunately, these brand-new big-tree apartments and big shopping malls cost so much to rent that the Monkey Businesses who could rent them could only pay very few bananas to their workers.  And so many monkeys had to pay high rent, and had low wages that they didn't have hardly any bananas left over to spend at the big new shopping malls.  A lot of the trees sat empty!  Soon MFREIT wasn't making 20 percent, it was losing bananas for its investors!

Many investors who thought they would be able to retire with the bananas they gave to MFREIT found out that they didn't have nearly as many bananas as they thought they would!

So in the end, all of the monkey families learned to live together, the older monkeys who had been "rich" and the younger monkeys who didn't get a chance.  They moved from the big cities in the middle of the forests back out to small villages at the forest edges, where trees didn't cost a lot of bananas to own or rent, and where it was even possible to own their own monkey-businesses without having to pay rent!  They realized it really didn't take much to make them happy.

All they really needed was a tree to sleep in, some bananas to eat, and eachother.  All of the monkeys realized this, and they all lived happily ever after.

The End.