Commercial properties might be bottoming out now. Many big investors are profiting in commercial properties. If you are a small investor, you still can profit from this opportunity by buying REIT shares that are investing in office buildings, shopping malls, giant apartment complexes and the like.
Aren't the types of opportunities the big guys pursue simply out of the reach of smaller players?
Not when the targeted investment vehicles are stock-market-traded REITs, and come with minimum entry prices of a thousand dollars, twenty five hundred dollars and up.
Equity REITs pool investors' money to buy these buildings either all cash or with moderately-leveraged mortgage debt. Though REITs come with the risk of declines in share prices when the stock market goes south, they are often well-managed companies run by experienced real estate professionals.
Unlike other public companies, REITs by law must distribute at least 90 percent of their taxable income to shareholders in the form of dividends.
Over the past three decades, according to industry data, REITs have returned an average 11.9 percent to their investors, well above the average for other stocks.
2010 could be an especially high yielding year because cash-rich REITs are sitting in the catbird seat to take defaulted commercial property off the hands of banks who badly want to get rid of them.
