Since this is a MMM forum, are there any REITs which only invest in Mustachian-friendly real estate? By this I mean walkable, bikeable, mixed-use cities and neighborhoods, as apposed to the cookie-cutter, McMansion, strip-mall garbage that makes up much of the real estate in the US. The former tends to be more resilient during economic downturns.
They're small and working on profitability, but HASI (Hannon Armstrong Sustainable Infrastructure) is a green energy REIT. Decent dividend, and low share price, so I recently took a small flyer on them.
Personally I prefer REITs to investment properties:
-Less difficult to file taxes
-No active property management to do (this is very time consuming)
-No nightmare tenant stories, no court dates, no serving paperwork from courts
-No legwork to fill vacancies
Meanwhile, you get access to better markets through REITs. I invest in individual REIT securities because of the dividends. I don't worry about the value of the investment, only the free cash flow and the dividend. If the dividend is stable, the share price can be what it will be, and if the business is solid, it only makes me want to buy more.
Further, REITs get beat up every time the Fed raises rates since they rely on debt to finance portfolio acquisitions, but there's a little lag time and they always seem to recover. And they have less correlation to the market at large. With bonds and bond funds getting dinged so badly over the past many years, they are as good an alternative as any for those looking to minimize the impact of a bear market, should one be headed our way soon as many predict.