One of the regular search terms that brings people to this site is: “Should I buy REITs” followed closely by “Are REITs conservative investments.” Sometimes, people think about REIT investments as identical blocks of real estate that have few differences between them. That, of course, is not the right perception. Just as there is a difference between buying and holding Coca-Cola and ExxonMobil for thirty years compared to holdings salesforce.com and Iron Mountain instead, there is a wild divergence in the quality of REIT investments that a person can make. Let’s walk through a couple examples.
The most conservative way to find an investment in real estate is to find one of the rare companies with an excellent balance sheet and a business model that retains customers during economic recessions without having to make many price concessions to them.
An example of a company that fits this conservative profile is … Read the rest of this article!