Tax Benefits of Creating a Real Estate Investment Trust: Holding Real Estate in a C-Corp?

From a tax perspective, conventional wisdom discourages owning real estate in a C-Corporation. After all, why pay corporate tax rates when you can shield yourself from personal liability and corporate tax using an LLC? However, owning real estate in an LLC gives rise to a host of other questions such as: how could one utilize an LLC to bring in thousands of marginal investors? Are potential real estate investors going to be deterred due to non-resident state filing requirements? Will tax exempt investors be deterred due to Unrelated Business Taxable Income (UBTI) generated from owning leveraged real estate through an...