Real Estate Investment Trusts – REITS
I have written about my views regarding real estate in the past. There is good income to be had from real estate without the added complexity of owning the real estate, repairing and maintaining it, finding and keeping tenants, and paying taxes, utilities, landscaping, and the day-to-day operational costs. I prefer a mix that includes warehouses, retail, specialty and recreational components.
I created the cover image for this post using ChatGPT. Because our grandsons like Lego toys, I thought it would be fun to create an image that shows me “building” some real estate that mimics our REIT holdings.
REIT ETFs
Because most of my readers don’t want to purchase individual REITs, it is worth considering REIT ETFs. If you look at Seeking Alpha’s QUANT ratings for REIT ETFs you will probably avoid all of them. I don’t think that is prudent. While it is true that the QUANT rating is a helpful indicator, it isn’t always a good long-term indicator for a sector or class of investments. If I were going to recommend a single ETF focused on REITs, I would suggest SCHH. (Schwab US REIT ETF.) This ETF has over 100 holdings and currently yields 3.04%. Sadly, the dividends are quarterly. I say sadly because some REITs pay monthly dividends.
My Spreadsheet
The following spreadsheet image shows all of our current “REIT” dividend investments. As you can see, the total dollars invested in the nine ETFs is about $268K and that is about 7.4% of our total holdings. If you have a smaller account balance, more of your total holdings should be in low-cost mutual funds and/or low-cost ETFs, not in these ETFs. If you can pick only one or two REITs then I recommend NNN and GTY. You should also look at APLE.
When looking at this data, remember that the holdings that show a “loss” are really not a loss. That is due to the fact that I have already received considerable dividends from these investments. For example, it looks like NNN has had a total loss of about $2.6K. However, we have received over $12.4K in dividends since I first started buying shares in February 2023. $3.5K of that total was received in 2026, so the EAI for this investment is solid. Always consider total returns when you buy an investment. (EAI = Estimated Annual Income)
The REIT Pivot Table Summary
The next image moved the positions into an Excel pivot table to summarize by ticker symbol. That table is used to create a graph. You can see my favorites are NNN, GTY, STAG and PSTL. Each of these is unique. NNN is focused on retail. GTY is focused on convenience stores, automotive and other single-tenant retail real estate. STAG is warehouse focused. PSTL owns US Post Office properties.
The Four Ingredients So Far
If we look at the first four pieces (no dividends, vanilla dividend ETFs, crazy dividends, and REITS, the summary looks like this. Note that (for these pieces) the investments yield over 7% on average.
Summary
Don’t get hung up on mimicking my holdings or percentages. You might be better served to have a higher allocation of SCHH shares. In other words, don’t feel compelled to copy me. Remember that you are not likely to buy shares at the same price I did. If you have questions about your own allocations, and if you are willing to send me a csv file of your holdings, I can give you a high-level suggestion about what you might want to consider.
As always, I welcome questions and comments. They help me understand the needs of my readers.
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