on REITs

There are an enormous amount of investment options available to the average investor or retirement planner, enough to confuse most of us. And when you ask the question whether you should own this or that, we ask it too. When we wanted to know what a REIT was, we asked an expert.

As a quick review, a REIT or real estate investment trusts is a stock and because of this, it can be purchased by you as a share or buy a mutual fund or ETF. This sort of investment is required to pay the shareholder 90% of the profits - after expenses. This is referred to as the yield. And in many instances, it can be a worthy rival to many other fixed income investments.

Our expert explained many of the nuances of a REIT and what they focus on, their methods of surviving economic downturns and most importantly why they should be part of a diversified portfolio.

In this edition of the Financial Impact Factor Radio with Paul Petillo, Dave Kittredge and Dave Ng, we had someone who has focused his career on real estate as an investment: Brad Thomas. Mr. Thomas researches and writes on a variety of real estate based fixed- income alternatives including both publicly-traded and non-traded REITs or real estate investment trusts. He has a broad background in capitalization and sustainable net lease investing. Mr. Thomas currently writes weekly articles for Seeking Alpha and Forbes where he maintains real-time research on many of the equity REITs and retailers.

Among the topics Brad explained included the risk of owning these investments, how they are structured and the dividends they offer, how to analyze their worth and most importantly, how these investments react to various economic forces. REITs have been around for over five decades and are a widely suggested part of a diversified portfolio.

This is a must listen show for not only the curious investor but those looking to better understand the subject of REIT investments.

Listen to Financial Impact Factor Radio with your hosts: Paul Petillo of BlueCollarDollar.com and Dave Kittredge and Dave Ng.

(reprinted with all permissions from bluecollardollar.com)

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