More About REIT Investing Investors who’d like to extend their search for the best REITs can do the following: Review Morningstar’s comprehensive list of real estate stocks to investigate further. Stay up to date on the real estate sector’s performance, key earnings reports, and more with Morningstar’s real estate sector page . Read Morningstar’s Guide to Stock Investing to learn how our approach to investing can inform your stock-picking process. Use the Morningstar Investor screener to build a short list of REIT stocks to research and watch. Read the latest news about notable real estate stocks from Morningstar senior equity analyst Kevin Brown . Alexandra Santiago-Lindsay contributed to this article.

Dividend Stocks for September 2025 Realty Income Realty Income is the largest triple-net REIT in the United States, with over 15,600 properties that mainly house retail tenants. The company describes itself as “The Monthly Dividend Company,” and its line of business and operating metrics make its dividend one of the most stable sources of income for investors. Even though about 80% of Realty Income’s tenants are in retail, most are focused on defensive segments, with characteristics such as being service-oriented, naturally protected against e-commerce pressures, or resistant to economic downturns. Additionally, the triple-net lease structure places the burden of all operational risk and cost on the tenant and requires the tenant to make capital expenditures to maintain the property rather than the landlord. These leases are often long term, frequently 15 years with additional extension options, which provides Realty Income a steady stream of rental income. Coverage ratios are also very high, so tenants are healthy and unlikely to request rent concessions, even during downturns. The steady, stable stream of revenue has allowed Realty Income to be one of only two REITs to be members of the S&P High-Yield Dividend Aricotrats Index and have a credit rating of A- or better. This makes Realty Income one of the most dependable investments for income-oriented investors. Stability comes at the cost of economic profit, however. The lease terms include very low annual rent increases around 1%, which helps keep the coverage ratio high but severely limits internal growth for the company. Therefore, to grow, Realty Income must rely on acquisitions. The company has executed nearly $32 billion in acquisitions since the start of 2019 at average cap rates above 6%. Given the access to cheap debt during much of this time, it has created a lot of value. However, rising interest rates over the past three years have increased the cost to fund external growth. While the company was able to maintain a consistent acquisition cap rate spread above interest rates on debt, we are concerned that the company won’t be able to continuously find deals at high cap rates and Realty Income will be left with just a low internal growth story.

Weyerhaeuser Weyerhaeuser ranks among the world’s largest forest product companies. The company operates three business segments: timberlands, wood products, and real estate. As a REIT, it does not have to pay federal income taxes on its timber harvest activities. This undervalued stock trades at a 22% discount to our fair value estimate of $32 per share. Crown Castle International rounds out our list of best REITs to buy now. Crown Castle owns and leases roughly 40,000 cell towers in the United States. The stock is 22% undervalued relative to our fair value estimate of $125 per share. Crown has, wisely, in our view, decided to divest its fiber business for $8.5 billion. Crown’s tower business is fantastic. It has maintained a portfolio of roughly 40,000 towers over the last decade, requiring minimal capital investment to drive growing cash flow. Wireless carriers lease space on towers to install antennas and other communication equipment to power their networks. Fixed annual rent escalators of roughly 3% provide a baseline for growth. On top of that, carriers regularly add new equipment to tower sites, requiring amendments that increase rent. Finally, Crown can often locate more than one carrier on a tower, providing meaningful operating leverage. If a tower requires incremental infrastructure to support new equipment, the carriers frequently agree to prepay some rent to fund this investment. Consumers’ mobile data consumption is steadily expanding, and we believe carriers will need to continue expanding and densifying their networks to meet demand. We expect towers will continue to provide the foundation on which mobile communications networks depend. We think Crown’s plans to divest its fiber assets will benefit shareholders over the long term. In 2024, Crown spent $1 billion on fiber capital expenditures, nearly 90% of firmwide investment. However, this business only accounted for a third of revenue and one-fourth of operating profit. Returns on capital in the fiber business have been very poor under Crown’s management. We expect these assets to produce better results in the hands of owners willing to pursue consolidation and aggressively focus on multiple sources of revenue.

Crown Castle International Dividend Stocks for September 2025 More About REIT Investing Investors who’d like to extend their search for the best REITs can do the following: Review Morningstar’s comprehensive list of real estate stocks to investigate further. Stay up to date on the real estate sector’s performance, key earnings reports, and more with Morningstar’s real estate sector page . Read Morningstar’s Guide to Stock Investing to learn how our approach to investing can inform your stock-picking process. Use the Morningstar Investor screener to build a short list of REIT stocks to research and watch. Read the latest news about notable real estate stocks from Morningstar senior equity analyst Kevin Brown . Alexandra Santiago-Lindsay contributed to this article.