Finding the best REITs to invest in requires more than just an understanding of the real estate market.
REITs—that’s short for real estate investment trusts—are fundamentally about property. However, the best REIT stocks often specialize in a particular corner of the real estate market, and are impacted by more than just mortgage rates or national real estate trends.
Furthermore, many investors believe the best REIT stocks provide dividend growth over time. That means looking beyond the short-term trends to make the most of long-term income potential.
Here are the basics of real estate investment trust investing, and how to find the best REIT stocks.
Disclaimer: This article does not constitute individualized investment advice. These funds appear for your consideration and not as investment recommendations. Act at your own discretion.
What Are Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)?
A real estate investment trust, often referred to as a REIT (pronounced “reet”) is a unique class of investment. But if you break down each of those terms that make up the name of this asset, it will begin to make more sense.
The first two words designate the kinds of companies you’ll be investing in. All REITs are companies that must have at least 75% of their total assets in real estate, and must derive at least 75% of its gross income from properties. That might sound obvious, but keep in mind that some REITs don’t own any physical property at all and are simply involved in mortgage paper. Even REITs that deal in physical real estate differ widely from one another. Some lease pretty common properties such as apartments, strip malls, or hotels. Others lease driving ranges or telecom towers instead of more conventional commercial real estate.
In other words: The universe of real estate investment trusts is quite varied, even if property is at the foundation of all REIT business models.
The last two words, “investment trust,” are also important in defining how these companies treat their investors. There are certain thresholds that set REITs apart from conventional publicly traded company stocks, including a mandate that they have no more than 50% ownership resting in the hands of five or fewer investors.
But perhaps the most important rule you need to know about real estate investment trusts is that they must pay at least 90% of taxable income to shareholders in the form of dividends each year. This demand for consistent income is a big reason many investors are drawn to REITs, particularly as a way to boost their retirement savings through regular dividends.
2 Types of REITs to Know
The REIT universe is sometimes divided into two distinct flavors: equity REITs and mortgage REITs. And right now, amid a volatile interest rate environment, the distinction is pretty important to acknowledge.
Equity REITs
If you’ve been investing for a while you’ve probably come across the word “equity” before. The term is shorthand for a direct ownership stake—and some investors even use the term “equities” to refer to the stock market as a whole, as shares of publicly traded companies are in fact equity stakes in individual businesses.
Equity REITs, then, are directly invested in real estate assets. They own or manage properties ranging from office buildings to shopping centers to apartment complexes, leasing that space and generating income from the rents. And publicly traded equity REITs allow you to enjoy in that exposure through their shares, which you can purchase through any traditional brokerage account.
Mortgage REITs
Mortgage REITs, on the other hand, don’t traffic in real estate properties—instead, they deal with debt. They finance real estate, operating less like a traditional REIT and more like a financial firm. This is done by either originating mortgages, or buying and selling those mortgages and related mortgage-backed securities. It also commonly involves borrowing heavily to then trade all that mortgage paper at scale. Their profits, then, tend to revolve around net interest income (NII): the difference between the interest revenue they generate and the financing costs on all their assets.
This fundamentally makes mortgage REITs riskier than equity REITs. After all, the 2008 financial crisis was caused in large part by financial firms borrowing heavily to invest in the debts of third parties. Particularly in the current interest rate environment, where borrowing is getting steadily more expensive all around, that’s a tough spot to be in.
That said, many mortgage REITs offer twice or even thrice the income potential of equity REITs. These dividends might be at risk of evaporating if things go south, but if they hold up, investors will be richly rewarded for looking beyond the conventional players on Wall Street.
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The Best REITs to Invest In
You already might be wondering how to decide between mortgage REITs or equity REITs, or whether you should invest in a small commercial real estate firm or a big industrial park operator. After all, there’s a great big world of real estate investing out there!
The answer is: There is no one right answer for everyone. With so many things on Wall Street, your unique risk tolerance and retirement planning needs are critical to deciding the best REITs to invest in.
The following list should get you pointed in the right direction, however. All seven of these leading real estate investment trusts offer significant income and the potential for long-term upside if things pan out in 2024 and beyond.
Best REIT #1: Essential Properties Realty Trust
- Market capitalization: $6.3 billion
- Dividend yield: 3.7%
- REIT industry: Retail
Essential Properties Realty Trust (EPRT) is a retail REIT, which doesn’t exactly have the best of connotations—largely because of the hammering the sector took during COVID, but also because of the longer-term hits that malls and other retail properties have taken from the growth of e-commerce.
But EPRT isn’t that kind of retail REIT.
Essential Properties owns and manages more than 2,100 single-tenant properties spanning 423 different tenants in every state but Hawaii. And despite being a “retail” REIT, only about 3% of the portfolio is true retail—roughly 80% is service-based, while another 15% is experience-focused. Top industries right now include car washes, early childhood education, medical and dental, quick-service shops, and convenience stores. So the word “essential” might be doing a lot of work, but EPRT still isn’t as exposed to economic whims as, say, a mall where most of its stores are selling jeans or jewelry.
This business model has delivered unsurprisingly steady (and at times, surprisingly robust) growth, and Essential Properties has been more than eager to share the benefits with its stock holders. The company has been raising its dividend semiannually for years, and the quarterly payout is 28% higher than where it was five years ago.
Related: 13 Dividend Kings for Royally Resilient Income
Best REIT #2: Equinix
- Market capitalization: $84.5 billion
- Dividend yield: 2.2%
- REIT industry: Datacenters
Equinix (EQIX) is an attractive REIT for investors looking for a play on megatrends including cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence.
Specifically, EQIX is the largest global data center and colocation provider for enterprise networks. In other words, Equinix is responsible for the actual server rooms that house all the bits and bytes that power all the content and software we offload to “the cloud” without really considering where the cloud is.
Considering the fact that cloud-based software is now just the normal way of doing business, that creates a massive opportunity for Equinix as one of the largest specialized firms in the space. This digital infrastructure provider boasts almost half a million connections to more than 10,000 customers, with a global reach of 75 metro areas in 35 countries. Those numbers will surely grow, with the company currently working on 56 projects in 24 countries.
Despite what its well-below-sector-average yield of 2.2% might otherwise indicate, Equinix has been downright aggressive in sharing its wealth with EQIX holders. The payout has grown by nearly 180% over the past 10 years … it’s just that the shares have risen even more rapidly. EQIX stock is up 230% on a pure price basis in the past decade. Including dividends, shareholders have enjoyed a 315% total return.
Related: 7 Best High-Dividend ETFs for Income-Minded Investors
Best REIT #3: American Tower
- Market capitalization: $98.4 billion
- Dividend yield: 3.2%
- REIT industry: Telecommunications
American Tower (AMT) is one of the largest global REITs of any flavor, and its speciality is owning and operating multitenant communications real estate. This includes telecom towers that it rents to wireless providers, fiber optic networks, data centers, and other important infrastructure components that power our digital lives.
With a portfolio of about 150,000 different properties and massive demand for telecommunications from both businesses and consumers alike regardless of the macroeconomic picture, AMT offers incredible reliability.
Admittedly, growth potential in the U.S. is modest given that America’s mobile giants have slowed spending now that 5G has largely been rolled out. However, it still has exposure to the international expansion of 5G, as well as data centers via its 2021 acquisition of CoreSite.
AMT might raise a few eyeballs from a dividend perspective. That’s because in the first quarter of 2024, it announced a roughly 5% cut in its payout after years of uninterrupted quarterly hikes. However, it still ended up paying out more across 2024 than it did in 2025, and it raised its payout back to $1.70 per share to kick off 2025. So while AMT might not be as feisty a raiser as it once was, AMT’s dividend still looks plenty secure.
Related: 7 High-Quality, High-Yield Dividend Stocks
Best REIT #4: VICI Properties
- Market capitalization: $33.4 billion
- Dividend yield: 5.5%
- REIT industry: Gaming and hospitality
VICI Properties (VICI) specializes in gaming, hospitality, and entertainment properties. While you’re probably most familiar with its Vegas real estate, which includes Caesars Palace Las Vegas, MGM Grand, and the Venetian Resort Las Vegas, VICI actually owns 54 gaming properties and 39 other “experiential” properties—such as golf courses and Bowlero bowling alleys—across roughly two dozen states and Canada.
VICI and other gaming REITs are a way to invest in gambling/gaming with the potential for less volatility. That’s because their revenues aren’t directly driven by ups and downs in the business—they collect rent. So while a prolonged economic downturn, say, could weigh on operators’ ability to pay their bills, VICI is a bit more insulated from quarter-to-quarter issues.
Indeed, not only does VICI specifically have lease escalators that help ensure steadier growth going forward, but those escalators—at either the rate of inflation (via the consumer price index, or CPI) or 1.7% for non-CPI escalators—are above the industry average.
This helps VICI pay a dividend that’s not just reliable, but quite large, too—it currently yields north of 5%. It also enjoys extremely high ratings from the Wall Street community, earning it a spot among our best dividend stocks.
Related: The 8 Best Dividend ETFs [Get Income + Diversify]
Best REIT #5: Ventas
- Market capitalization: $29.5 billion
- Dividend yield: 2.9%
- REIT industry: Medical and senior housing
Ventas (VTR) is one of the market’s largest health care REITs, boasting more than 1,400 properties in the U.S., Canada, and U.K. This includes more than 850 senior housing communities, with the rest spread across outpatient medical, research, hospitals, long-term acute care, in-patient rehabilitation, and skilled-nursing facilities.
In short, Ventas sits at the intersection of a number of “necessary” health care properties.
COVID affected real estate operators of all stripes, though Ventas was among the hardest-hit, with VTR stock losing roughly three-quarters of its value in less than two months as residents fled its senior housing and skilled-nursing facilities. That prompted its push into medical office real estate, which provided some stability. But the demographics that lifted senior housing and nursing operators certainly didn’t disappear, and now those properties are back in the spotlight.
Ventas is also maximizing its senior housing properties by converting many of them from triple-net lease (NNN)—where tenants are responsible for taxes, maintenance, and insurance, and Ventas just cashes a check—to its more actively managed Senior Housing Operating Portfolio (SHOP). These SHOP properties have so far been a significant driver of net operating income (NOI). Indeed, Ventas is guiding for cash NOI growth of 11% to 16% in 2025.
As mentioned before, Ventas was crushed during COVID, forcing the company to slash its dividend from 79¢ per share to 45¢, where it remained for years. However, in Q1 2025, the company finally delivered positive movement, announcing a 6.7% hike to the payout, to 48¢ per share.
Related: 15 Best High-Yield Investments [Safe Options Right Now]
Best REIT #6: EastGroup Properties
- Market capitalization: $52.5 billion
- Dividend yield: 3.2%
- REIT industry: Industrial
EastGroup Properties (EGP) boasts some 63 million square feet worth of business distribution and other industrial properties across 12 states, predominantly in the American Sun Belt.
Specifically, EGP has homed in on properties of between 20,000 and 100,000 square feet—within the “shallow bay” (20,000-140,000 square feet) segment of distribution centers, which are often located in urban or suburban areas that are close to consumer markets. This type of property has seen much smaller inventory growth compared to “larger box” centers, but also lower vacancy and availability rates.
You won’t be surprised to find that the recent tariff scare put a dent in EGP’s stock price, but shares have been recovering as the U.S. has begun to retreat from its aggressive stance.
Growth has been elusive over the past couple of years, but EastGroup remains one of the highest-quality REITs in the industrial segment, boasting healthy cash-flow growth and very low debt leverage compared to its peers.
EGP’s dividend, meanwhile, has grown for 13 consecutive years, and in 29 of the past 32 years.
Related: The 13 Best Mutual Funds to Buy
Best REIT #7: Ellington Financial
- Market capitalization: $1.2 billion
- Dividend yield: 12.0%
- REIT industry: Mortgage
Ellington Financial (EFC) is a mortgage-related real estate investment trust. As previously mentioned, that means elevated risk for several reasons.
First, the fundamentals of trading mortgage paper instead of operating physical properties come with unique risks. Secondly, a rising-interest-rate environment could pinch EFC as its borrowing costs rise. And lastly, EFC is also the smallest stock on this list—meaning that unlike multibillion-dollar REITs, it simply doesn’t have the same resources to weather any widespread downturns in the economy.
That said, Ellington is a little bigger than it once was. In December 2024, it completed its merger with fellow mortgage REIT Arlington Asset Investment Corp., which deals in mortgage servicing rights, agency mortgage-backed securities, and credit. The company’s name remains Ellington Financial and the stock still trades as EFC.
Ellington is a rarity on this list, as it pays a monthly dividend—and a high one at that. And that monthly dividend was actually reduced just a few months after the merger, from 15¢ monthly to 13¢, as it worked to absorb Arlington and as a 2022 acquisition, Longbridge Financial, attempted to return to profitability. Good news on the latter front: Longbridge, a reverse mortgage business, has indeed returned to the black and actually looks attractive as some Baby Boomers choose to remain in their existing homes during retirement.
Related: The 10 Best Vanguard Funds to Buy
REITs: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Can you buy REITs in funds?
Buying individual REITs like the ones above can be an effective way to tap into the real estate market using publicly traded stocks. But there are also REIT mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) out there that provide diversified ways to invest across the sector in one simple holding.
For instance, the Vanguard Real Estate ETF (VNQ) has more than $33 billion in total assets under management, and gives you exposure to 160 different top REITs. Furthermore, the VNQ fund passes through the dividends of its holdings to provide an annualized yield of more than 4%.
REIT ETFs carry their own unique risks, but they can be another effective way to gain exposure to real estate investments in your portfolio and provide consistent retirement income.
How else can you buy real estate?
Typically, if you want to own stock in a real estate company, you have to invest through the public markets. But equity crowdfunding makes it possible for everyday investors to secure a stake in privately held real estate businesses.
Equity crowdfunding platforms typically allow for small investments (read just hundreds or even tens of dollars) in a wide range of businesses. The platform is usually paid through either a monthly fee or by collecting a percentage of the funds raised for the business. And generally speaking, these platforms provide high ease of use compared to many other types of real estate investments.
Equity crowdfunding pick: EquityMultiple
- Available: Sign up here
Some real estate crowdfunding platforms only allow you to invest in property portfolios. However, some platforms, such as EquityMultiple, also allow you to invest in individual properties—in this case, commercial real estate (CRE).
EquityMultiple carries a minimum $5,000 initial investment and is limited to accredited investors. However, those investors have access to individual commercial real estate deals, funds, and even diversified short-term notes.
For those interested in learning more about EquityMultiple, consider signing up for an account and going through their qualification process.
