One shows 7.4 percent yield, one shows 3.4. I picked wrong for the wrong reason.

The requirement is real. To keep REIT status a company has to distribute at least 90 percent of its taxable income to shareholders, which is why the sector pays out so much compared to other stocks. Taxable income isn't the same as cash flow, so the required distribution and the dividend a company can comfortably afford are two different numbers, and that gap is where dividend cuts live.

To check whether a dividend is at risk, find the company's AFFO per share and divide the annual dividend by it. Above roughly 90 percent means there's very little room. Also pull the dividend history back to 2019 and see whether they cut in 2020 and whether they ever restored it.

Something worth asking is whether that 7.4 is trailing or forward. Some sites show the last four quarterly payments annualized, so if the company already announced a reduced dividend for next quarter, the number on your screen is describing money that is no longer being paid. Check the company's own investor page for the declared rate per share and do the division yourself.

Your third point is the answer to your first. Office-heavy portfolios carry high yields because the market is pricing real uncertainty about how much of that space gets releasable and at what rent, and because the sector is split between well-located newer buildings and everything else. Warehouses yield less because buyers are willing to pay more per dollar of income for space they think has pricing power as new construction slows. The yield gap is compensation for the risk difference. It isn't free money sitting there because nobody noticed.

Worth understanding what you're actually buying inside the label too. Some healthcare and senior housing REITs take the operating result of the buildings rather than a fixed lease payment, so you own staffing costs and occupancy risk. I manage buildings for a living and payroll moves faster than any rent escalator I've ever signed. Nothing to do with your two names, but it's the kind of thing hiding under a one-word sector description on a website.

I keep a sheet with dividend per share by quarter going back to 2018 for every name I'm watching. Takes an hour per company from the investor relations page and it has knocked more names off my list than any valuation metric. Cuts show up in that history and so do the recoveries, and you learn quickly which management teams protect the payout at the cost of the balance sheet.

I was exactly here four months ago and the thing that helped was buying the broad fund with a small amount first, then researching individual names while already owning something. Reading about it with no position was endless. Reading about it while holding 500 dollars of it made the questions specific fast.

A high number on a screen usually means somebody already priced in bad news. Same as a cheap quote on a job.

Third option in your list is the one I'd take at 9k. The fund holds dozens of names, so no single dividend cut ruins your year while you're still learning what the metrics mean.

One more thing that bit me when I started. Buildings eat capital to stay leasable, and on the office side tenant improvement allowances and leasing commissions can run enormous per square foot on a renewal. That spend sits below the FFO line in a lot of presentations, which is why AFFO is the honest number. If the dividend is being paid out of FFO while AFFO barely covers it, the payout is being funded by deferring work on the buildings. Scope creep with a stock ticker.