CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA-The damage caused by the earthquake that struck Japan on March 11 is still being tabulated; causalities, for instance, could be as many as 10,000. Initial calculations--from locally based SNL--of the damages suffered by US REITs that own property in the country, however, suggest that the damage to REITs' portfolios has been minimal. For now, that is.

“There has definitely been some damage and there will be ripple effects with the economy and operations getting back on track,” SNL analyst Jason Lai tells me. “Overall, though, US REITs could have fared much worse.” That could still happen, he says, if the worst fears about the unstable nuclear plants are realized. But right now, Lai says that “people are still trying to assess the details of the existing damage.”

The US REITs with the greatest amount of damage include Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide (which  technically is no longer a REIT), ProLogis, Simon Property Group and AMB Property Corp., told me. It found that Starwood has the largest exposure as a percentage of its total owned portfolio, with the hotel company having one property in the area, or 1.15% of its total portfolio. ProLogis has the largest exposure on a property-count level, with four properties in the five prefectures. Simon has two properties in the area, and AMB Property has one property, a 420,000-square-foot facility in Sendai, which SNL is still evaluating.

Japanese REITs, not surprisingly, bore the brunt of the disaster. Japan Logistics Fund had the greatest exposure as a percentage of its total portfolio, with nearly 43% of the company’s portfolio in the five prefectures, SNL said. Saizen Real Estate Investment Trust has the highest exposure on a property-count basis, with 28 properties in the severely affected prefectures.