Currently more than 80 million Americans are invested in REITs directly or through REIT mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs). This is not surprising when you learn that the easiest way to outperform markets in the past 30 years, would have been to overweight REITs in your portfolio.
REITs have consistently generated greater total returns and payed higher dividends, all while being less risky:
(Source. REITs: dark blue line; S&P500: grey line.)
Counting out the latest 3-year period of underperformance, the return differential is even more important:
From 1997 to 2016, REITs