--- title: REITs description: Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are companies that own, operate, or finance income-producing real estate. Learners will understand how REITs operate, evaluate their dividend yields, and use them to gain real estate exposure without owning physical property. category: finance-economics subcategory: investing difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/reits --- # REITs Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are companies that own, operate, or finance income-producing real estate. Learners will understand how REITs operate, evaluate their dividend yields, and use them to gain real estate exposure without owning physical property. ## Available Resources 4 Books • 3 Websites • 1 Papers ## Books ### 1. Investing in REITs: Real Estate Investment Trusts (4th Edition) **Author:** Ralph L. Block Block invested in REIT shares for four decades and wrote the field's long-standing reference. Fourth edition covers REIT history and cycles, property-sector economics, balance sheet and dividend safety analysis, valuation using FFO, AFFO and NAV, and portfolio construction. Data stops at 2011. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118004450?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** reits, ffo, nav-valuation, dividend-investing, property-sectors ### 2. Educated REIT Investing: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding and Investing in Real Estate Investment Trusts **Author:** Stephanie Krewson-Kelly, Glenn R. Mueller Krewson-Kelly spent fifteen years as a sell-side REIT analyst and now runs investor relations at a listed REIT; Mueller is a real estate professor. Covers industry structure, FFO and AFFO mechanics, NAV, leverage and debt maturity analysis, and sector-by-sector characteristics. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119708699?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** reits, ffo, affo, nav-valuation, reit-analysis ### 3. Investing in REITs **Author:** Ralph L. Block Ralph Block's standard guide to real estate investment trusts: how REITs are structured and taxed, property sectors, funds from operations and other valuation metrics, and how REIT returns compare with stocks and bonds. Readers learn to analyse and select individual REITs. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1576600432?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, business-entrepreneurship, investing ### 4. The Intelligent REIT Investor **Author:** Brad Thomas, Stephanie Krewson-Kelly A practitioner's introduction to REIT investing covering the main property sectors, from office and retail to healthcare and data centres, plus FFO and AFFO, dividend safety and balance-sheet risk. Readers learn to evaluate REITs for an income-focused portfolio. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119252717?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, business-entrepreneurship, investing ## Websites ### 1. What's a REIT? — Nareit Reference Hub **Author:** Nareit Reference hub from the US REIT trade association covering the legal structure, the ninety percent taxable-income distribution requirement, equity versus mortgage REITs, listed versus non-listed versus private vehicles, and the property sectors from data centers to net lease. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.reit.com/what-reit **Tags:** reits, reit-structure, reit-taxation, property-sectors, mortgage-reits ### 2. SEC Investor Bulletin: Non-traded REITs **Author:** SEC Office of Investor Education and Advocacy SEC Office of Investor Education bulletin on REITs that register with the Commission but do not list on an exchange. Details illiquidity, front-end fees reaching fifteen percent, distributions funded from offering proceeds or borrowings, valuation opacity, and external-manager conflicts. Non-traded REIT risk is one of the topic's stated key concepts, and it is the single area where the internet is most compromised: nearly all 'education' about non-traded REITs is published by the sponsors selling them. This is the only authority with no conflict. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/general-resources/news-alerts/alerts-bulletins/investor-bulletins-89 **Tags:** non-traded-reits, reits, investor-protection, fees-and-costs, liquidity-risk ### 3. reit.com REIT.com is the official site of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (Nareit). It offers industry news, data and research, investor education, and policy updates about REITs and the real estate investment trust sector. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://reit.com **Tags:** websites, business-entrepreneurship, investing ## Papers ### 1. Nareit Funds From Operations White Paper — 2018 Restatement **Author:** Nareit The REIT trade body's authoritative restatement of Funds From Operations, the industry's standard non-GAAP earnings measure. Specifies which gains, losses, impairments, and depreciation adjustments enter the calculation, with worked examples and the reasoning behind each treatment. Every blog post, calculator, and course that explains FFO is downstream of this one document. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.reit.com/sites/default/files/2018-FFO-white-paper-(11-27-18).pdf **Tags:** ffo, reits, non-gaap-metrics, reit-accounting, financial-reporting --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/reits