3k into a REIT index fund while the down payment pile keeps growing
First deal money is at 19k and needs to be around 45k. That's another two years at my savings rate, and the whole time I've been reading about buildings I can't buy.
So I put 3k into a broad REIT index fund. Small on purpose.
What I actually bought: one fund holding a wide spread of REITs across sectors, expense ratio under 0.15 percent. Bought once, no plan to trade it. Yield is around 3.5 percent, so a bit over 100 a year, paid quarterly. A hundred a year buys nothing. I wanted the sleeve to exist before the money was big enough to matter.
Four months in it's up slightly and I've collected one dividend of 26 dollars. The surprise was how much it moves. Down 4 percent in a week on something that had nothing to do with anyone's rent roll.
What I'd keep is buying the whole index instead of picking. I was two clicks from a single name paying 7 percent and I had no way to tell whether that was a strong business or a distress signal.