Real estate investment trusts in the United States have raised $10.6 billion from share sales this year, almost matching the total for all of 2008, to reduce debt and acquire assets from competitors weakened by the recession, Bloomberg reported.

Property companies raised $6.51 billion in April alone as the Bloomberg REIT Index rallied 30 percent. Simon Property Group Inc., the biggest U.S. mall owner, sold shares for $1 billion this week and Vornado Realty Trust, the third-largest U.S. REIT by market value, raised more than $700 million.

“The companies being given capital are being given a call option on survival and those that don’t will become food for the ones that have it,” said Andrew Duffy, former head of REIT investments at TIAA-CREF and now president of Global Real Estate Fund Management LLC in Princeton, N.J. “Today, we have about 100 publicly traded REITs. Likely in two years, there will be one-third fewer.”

The REITs that have sold shares can pay off debt coming due this year and avoid distressed sales amid rising vacancies and declining prices. They’ll have the chance to bid for assets such as those of General Growth Properties Inc., which owns shopping centers across the country, including Jordan Creek Town Center in West Des Moines, and Maguire Properties Inc., the biggest office landlord in downtown Los Angeles, which is selling buildings to pay down debt. General Growth filed for bankruptcy protection on April 16.

U.S. commercial property values dropped almost 22 percent through February from the October 2007 peak, according to Moody’s Investors Service, and delinquencies climbed to the highest level in at least 11 years in April, according to property research firm Trepp LLC.

General Growth has been trying to sell the South Street Seaport in Manhattan and Boston’s Faneuil Hall. Maguire Properties is accelerating property sales to raise cash and repay debt from the 2007 purchase of buildings from Blackstone Group LP.