Okay, I decided to take the money from my Lunch Budget (Experiment) and put it into a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust).  Now, I don’t expect the stock price of the REIT to rise much higher than the levels that they are currently at.  So you might be wondering why am I doing this?  …The dividend!

REITs historically pay a dividend percentage payout of about 6% to 7% for their dividend.

Why? Because they get special tax treatment if they do so.

To qualify as a REIT tax structure, a company has to:

• invest at least 75% of total assets in Real Estate
• deriving at least 75 percent of gross income as rents from real property or interest from mortgages on real property
• distributing annually at least 90% of taxable income to shareholders in the form of dividends

So why would a company decided to be classified as a REIT?  Because they are able to pass the taxes to the shareholder instead of paying it themselves.  So these investment would be great in a Roth IRA, or in a child’s UTMA account where they don’t earn much money or the tax consequence is minimal.

I’m hoping that the addition of a REIT company while the fed interest rates are low will benefit me by the REIT stock appreciating and by receiving the juicy stock dividend that is higher than normal at this time!!!

Bests,

Don