I recently had the opportunity to meet with the CEO and CFO of VICI Properties at REIT Week in NYC.

VICI is one of our favorite REITs of all time. Its CEO, Edward Pitoniak, even wrote the foreword of my new book, The REIT Advantage, which was recently published. (Members of High Yield Landlord can get it for free by clicking here)

Earlier this year, we bought VICI for our Retirement Portfolio after its share price dropped to a level that we thought had become very compelling for income focused investors.

At the time, VICI was trading at just around 11.5x AFFO and offered a dividend yield of 6.5%.

This was unusually attractive for a REIT that has become much safer over time as a result of its larger scale, better diversification, investment-grade balance sheet, and perfect track record of 100% occupancy and 100% rent collection since inception.

The key point of our thesis is that VICI is not a traditional net lease REIT.

Most net lease REITs own relatively generic properties, such as pharmacies, dollar stores, restaurants, and convenience stores. These assets can be good investments, but they are often heavily competed for, easier to replicate, and far less mission-critical to tenants.

VICI is different.

It owns trophy casino and experiential real estate, much of it in supply-constrained markets like the Las Vegas Strip. These assets are far harder to replicate because they require licenses, huge amounts of capital, specialized operating expertise, and irreplaceable locations.

They are also more mission-critical to the tenants. A tenant can often move a dollar store across the street, but it cannot simply replace Caesars Palace, the Venetian, MGM Grand, or Mandalay Bay.

This is why VICI has been able to secure unusually long leases, roughly 40 years on average, with strong master lease protections, CPI-linked rent escalators, and tenant reinvestment requirements.

In short, we believe that VICI owns some of the highest quality real estate in the net lease sector, but the market continues to value it at a discounted multiple because of concerns over tenant concentration and certain regional casino assets.

This latest meeting was valuable because it directly addressed some of these concerns.

The biggest news was the major M&A activity involving its two largest tenants.

Caesars Entertainment (CZR) announced that it would be acquired by Fertitta Entertainment, and MGM Resorts (MGM) received a go-private proposal from Barry Diller’s People Inc., formerly IAC.

This is very material to VICI because Caesars and MGM are its two largest tenants, together representing roughly 70% of its rental income.

Naturally, this is what we discussed for most of the meeting.

Is this good or bad news for VICI as the landlord?

So far, the market appears to view it as neutral.

VICI’s stock has not reacted much in either direction.

But management views it very differently. They see it as overwhelmingly positive. After reflecting on the meeting, I think they are probably right.

A Huge Vote Of Confidence In VICI’s Real Estate

The first point management made is that these potential acquirers are highly sophisticated players.

They are not making small passive investments. They are making huge bets, involving tens of billions of dollars, on the operators that control VICI’s real estate.

This is a major vote of confidence in the casino sector at a time when sentiment is weak. But more importantly for us, it is also a vote of confidence in the quality and value of VICI’s real estate.

The market has recently been worried about slowing Las Vegas visitation, weaker regional casino performance, consumer pressure, and tenant credit risk.

But while the public market worries, sophisticated strategic buyers are looking to acquire the operators.

That tells you something. It suggests that private market buyers see long-term value where public market investors currently see risk.

This is especially relevant because VICI is the landlord behind many of these assets. If the assets were truly impaired, it is hard to imagine sophisticated buyers making such large bets on the operators that depend on them and are on the hook for the multi-decade lease liability.

Better Operators Could Make The Assets More Valuable

The second point is that these potential buyers are not simply financial sponsors looking for a quick trade.

They are highly experienced operators and strategic investors with significant scale and long successful track records of value creation in gaming, hospitality, and entertainment.

They would not pursue these transactions unless they believed that they could create value. That value creation could come from better management, better capital allocation, better renovations, better cross-selling, and better long-term planning.

This matters to VICI because the stronger and more profitable the operators become, the safer VICI’s rent becomes.

One point that stood out to me is that Caesars and MGM have been public companies, and public companies are often forced to manage around quarterly results, stock market sentiment, and analyst expectations.

This can lead to short-term decision-making. It can also discourage long-term reinvestment if the market is not immediately rewarding it.

Private ownership can change that. A private owner can think more like a long-term operator. It can invest through cycles, renovate properties, improve operations, and make decisions that may not help next quarter’s earnings, but could create more value over time.

That could be very good for VICI as it owns the real estate. If the properties become better operated, better maintained, and more profitable, the long-term security of VICI’s cash flow improves.

Management also discussed the potential for more cross-selling opportunities across larger combined platforms. That could further improve property-level performance.

The Deals Could Accelerate Tenant Diversification

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Important Note

Last week, I attended REIT Week in NYC, the biggest annual REIT conference in the world, bringing together the management teams of most major REITs.

I had the chance to meet with many of them, as well as speak with several prominent REIT investors.

I am still digesting all the new information that I gained, and I expect to share exclusive interviews and my main takeaways with you over the coming days.

Before that, I want to wrap up Q1 earnings season with our reports on specialty REITs today. Stay tuned!

Earnings Update: Specialty REITs (Q1 2026)

In 2026, there has been a spree of good news associated with our specialty REITs.

Crown Castle (CCI) closed on the $8.4 billion sale of its fiber & small cell segment, turning the REIT into a pure-play owner/operator of North American wireless communication towers. The proceeds from this sale are going entirely to debt reduction and selective share buybacks (up to $1 billion).

We think CCI is a materially stronger company without the drag of the low-margin, capital-intensive small cell segment.

Meanwhile, SBA Communications (SBAC) has seen multiple reports of a potential buyout by a private buyer, especially alternative asset manager KKR & Co. (KKR). And while CCI remains solely focused on the US market, SBAC continues to expand internationally. Currently, the focus is largely on Central America, where SBAC is actively buying land and developing towers in Guatemala.

Uniti Group (UNIT) has surged ~65% year-to-date as the integration with Windstream appears to be working out in shareholders’ favor. The company is finding more high-tech uses for its fiber infrastructure, including deals with cloud computing players. And while UNIT once carried debt at yields over 10%, the company recently secured $1.14 billion of asset-backed securities at a weighted average interest rate of 6.18%.

NewLake Capital Partners (NLCP) may continue to navigate tenant challenges in the near-term, but the recent rescheduling of medicinal marijuana will progressively ease financial conditions for the cannabis industry. What’s more, this federal regulatory change also paves the way for an eventual up-listing from the over-the-counter market to a major US exchange, which will dramatically expand NLCP’s potential shareholder base.

CubeSmart (CUBE) has had the quietest year so far with a light news flow as the REIT’s portfolio fundamentals stabilize.

Lastly, Rayonier (RYN) continues to integrate the enormous PotlachDeltic acquisition, which closed in late January. And while the huge timberland segment is performing well, the more exciting story is arguably the rising value of its undeveloped land. Recent rural land sales have averaged $7,280 per acre, up significantly from 2025’s $4,906 per acre. RYN’s land bank is highly valuable in a world where data centers and the electrical facilities needed to power them are taking up more and more land.

Let’s now turn to the earnings updates for our specialty REITs.

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Important Note

Last week, I attended REIT Week in NYC, the biggest annual REIT conference in the world, bringing together the management teams of most major REITs.

I had the chance to meet with many of them, as well as speak with several prominent REIT investors.

I am still digesting all the new information that I gained, and I expect to share exclusive interviews and my main takeaways with you over the coming days.

Before that, I want to wrap up Q1 earnings season with our reports on residential REITs today, followed by specialty REITs, which will be posted tomorrow.

Stay tuned!

Earnings Update: Residential REITs (Q1 2026)

In our Q4 2025 Earnings Update for Residential REITs, we gave a sober analysis of the present situation for rental housing in the United States.

In short:

• While growth in new supply of all types of housing, multifamily and single-family, has fallen significantly, the sheer amount of housing built over the last five years has created an overhang that would take years to absorb even under normal demand conditions.

• Unfortunately, demand conditions are below-average, as growth in the labor market and working-age population are both anemic.

• Rental housing is benefiting from homebuying unaffordability across the United States, with affordability for first-time buyers still hovering near its lowest level in 40 years. This is keeping many would-be homebuyers in the rental market.

Since that last update, which admittedly was rather dour, we have seen some green shoots sprouting up — or, to mix metaphors, some light at the end of the tunnel.

On the demand side, we’ve seen job growth begin to slightly rebound, keeping a lid on the gradual, upward trend in unemployment.

Wage growth does continue to slide, which hinders landlords’ ability to raise rents, especially at a time when gasoline prices are eating into renters’ budgets.

But job growth is arguably more important than wage growth right now, as it should lead to an increase in lease-up and a drop in vacancy rates.

In fact, nationwide data from Apartment List shows just that.

Over the last few months, the national average vacancy rate has ever-so-slightly declined from its peak of 7.3% in February to 7.2% in May.

To be fair, though, Cushman & Wakefield disagrees with Apartment List in their Q1 2026 Multifamily Marketbeat report, which shows vacancy flat quarter-over-quarter as deliveries offset net absorption.

It is not surprising to see some disagreement between various data aggregators. US multifamily is a massive and highly fractured market, and it is hard to accurately capture comprehensive data about it.

While Cushman & Wakefield uses data from CoStar, Apartment List uses their own internal data.

Both, however, agree that national average apartment rent continues to be stagnant or slightly falling year-over-year, but both also express optimism that US multifamily has turned a corner and is on the path to recovery.

To quote Cushman & Wakefield:

If absorption in 2026 tracks closer to long-run averages, full-year demand would likely fall somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 units. This level of demand should be enough to prevent further increases in vacancy and support gradual firming in rent growth by year-end, though the pace of recovery will vary by market.

Another area of agreement between the two data aggregators is in which markets are performing well and which are struggling. Both show that coastal, supply-constricted markets like San Francisco and New York City are enjoying far stronger fundamentals right now than Sunbelt markets like Austin, TX, and Tampa, FL.

Before the pandemic, the Sunbelt tended to exhibit more stable fundamentals than coastal markets, which saw sharper booms and busts with the broader economy.

After the pandemic, however, the shift in population from coastal states into Sunbelt states caused developers to respond with a huge wave of new residential supply in those states. Then the inter-state migration trends cooled down along with the labor market, and the Sunbelt development pipeline turned out to be too big.

The Sunbelt appears to have become the new boom/bust region of the country.

To be clear, though, Sunbelt cities like Phoenix, Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, Charlotte, and Atlanta continue to capture disproportionate renter demand in 2026.

The Sunbelt is still projected to grow faster than the rest of the country.

That is why we remain confident in our Sunbelt multifamily REITs, despite the rough patch they are traversing right now.

As long as supply growth continues to fall and remain modest, the current oversupply in the Sunbelt should be absorbed within a year or so and give way to a return to bullish fundamentals.

We are also very pleased to see share buybacks as a common theme with our residential REITs as they sit at attractively low valuations. This is a fantastic allocation of capital, in our view, as it is basically tantamount to buying their own high-quality portfolios at a discount.

Let’s now turn to the earnings updates for our residential REITs:

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We recently met again with Joey Agree, the CEO of Agree Realty Corporation (ADC), in NYC.

Earlier this year, we met him in Michigan after visiting Agree Realty’s headquarters in person and touring the office. That meeting significantly strengthened our conviction in the company, and we published a detailed investment thesis explaining why we believe that Agree Realty is the highest quality net lease REIT in the market.

This latest meeting gave us another opportunity to discuss the company, the net lease market, and its near-term growth prospects in greater detail.

Our main takeaway is simple:

We believe that Agree Realty is now better positioned than ever, and its growth prospects appear to be accelerating and could soon surprise the market to the upside.

For this reason, we are today increasing the size of our position by buying another 100 shares, increasing our position size by 50%:

To be clear, Agree Realty is not cheap. It rarely is.

But the stock has recently dipped by about 11%, even as we think that its future growth prospects have improved further. We do not expect significant near-term upside from multiple expansion alone, perhaps a little bit, but we believe that the market is underestimating how strong its near-term results could be, potentially already in Q2. This could help it quickly regain those recent losses, and beyond that, we would expect steady double-digit annual total returns from the 4.4% dividend yield and 6% average annual long-term growth.

This is why we are now taking advantage of the dip to bulk up our position.

Here is a recap of our investment thesis, what has changed, and what we learned from our latest one-to-one with the CEO of the company.

Why We Like Agree Realty

Let us first recap why we like Agree Realty so much.

When we visited the company earlier this year, what stood out to us was that this is not just another large public REIT run by professional managers.

This is a family company.

The Agree family name is on the company, on the door, and heavily invested in the stock. Joey Agree and his father have bought millions of dollars’ worth of shares over the years, and they have never sold a share, despite already having most of their net worth tied to the company.

Joey also told us that the family will never sell a share.

That is extremely rare.

I do not know any other REIT that comes close to this level of insider ownership, insider buying, and long-term alignment. Not just in the net lease sector, but across the entire REIT market.

This matters because the net lease REIT business is very easy to mess up if management is too focused on near-term growth.

You can always buy lower-quality assets at higher cap rates, show more immediate accretion, and grow FFO per share faster for a while.

But over time, the quality of the real estate matters more than the lease.

A weak location, a non-fungible building, and a highly leveraged private equity-backed tenant can look fine for years, until competition increases, tenant profitability declines, and the tenant eventually defaults or refuses to renew.

This is why we think that a lot of net lease REITs are taking more risk than the market realizes.

They are buying higher cap rate properties because they want near-term accretion, but they are often accepting weaker locations, less fungible buildings, and lower quality tenants to get there.

Agree Realty is doing the opposite.

It focuses on the best real estate, leased to some of the strongest national retailers, in defensive categories, with a heavy focus on fungible property types that can be released if needed.

This is the main reason why Agree Realty has the best track record in the net lease sector.

It has not been the most aggressive.

It has been the most disciplined.

That discipline has allowed it to avoid major setbacks, maintain a low cost of capital, and compound at an attractive rate over long periods of time.

Real Estate Quality First

A key point that Joey emphasized to us is that tenant credit quality and real estate quality are closely connected.

Some net lease investors argue that tenant credit quality does not matter much because what really matters is the profitability of the real estate. If the tenant is profitable at a specific location, it is unlikely to vacate, even if it goes through financial stress.

That is true to some extent.

But it misses an important point.

The tenants with the best credit quality will typically end up with the best real estate in most cases.

That is because landlords and developers would almost always rather lease a property to a high-credit tenant if they can. A Walmart, Costco, Home Depot, or McDonald’s lease will typically result in a lower cap rate and, therefore a higher property value.

So if a developer has a great site in a strong market, with good visibility, access, traffic counts, and barriers to entry, it is likely to prioritize the strongest possible tenant.

This is why tenant credit quality cannot simply be ignored.

It is not just a tenant metric. It is often an indicator of real estate quality.

The best tenants have the resources, data, and bargaining power to secure the best locations, and landlords have a strong incentive to lease their best properties to these tenants because doing so increases property value and lowers risk.

Agree Realty has the highest exposure to these types of tenants in the net lease sector.

That matters a lot as it suggests that Agree Realty is not just collecting rent from stronger tenants. It also owns better real estate.

This is very important because profitability can change over time. If a property is located in a weak market with few barriers to entry, a competitor can build a better location nearby, take market share, and suddenly reduce the profitability of the original location.

This is especially problematic if the building is non-fungible and cannot easily be released to another tenant.

Car washes are a good example.

They can look great when they are new, and the rent coverage is high. But if competition increases and the market becomes oversupplied, that profitability can fall quickly. If the tenant then defaults, the landlord may be left with a highly specialized property that is difficult to release without a major rent cut.

Agree Realty largely avoids this type of risk.

Its portfolio is focused on leading national retailers in defensive categories, and many of its properties are relatively simple, rectangular boxes that could be released to other users if needed.

That gives the company a much better margin of safety.

Another important point is that Agree Realty has some of the lowest rents per square foot in the net lease sector, despite owning some of the best real estate.

At first, this may seem contradictory. Why would the best real estate have lower rents?

The reason is that the best tenants often negotiate the best rent terms. Large national retailers like Walmart, Costco, and other leading operators have scale, credit quality, strong bargaining power, and a lot of choices. Developers and landlords want these tenants because they lower the risk of the property and increase its value.

So they often accept lower rents in exchange for better tenant quality, stronger long-term durability, and margin of safety.

This is the type of tradeoff that we like.

Agree Realty may not always maximize rent per square foot, but it maximizes the quality and durability of its cash flow. That is far more important for long-term compounding.

Why We Are Buying More Now

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Important Note:

I am spending this week at the REIT Week Conference in NYC, where I will be meeting with many REIT management teams. As a result, I may be a bit slower than usual to answer questions. Thank you for your patience. I expect to share exclusive insights from several REIT CEO interviews later this week. Stay tuned!

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NewLake Capital Partners: CEO Interview After Major Cannabis Catalyst

NewLake Capital Partners (NLCP) has been one of our more speculative REIT investments, but also one with potentially significant upside.

The stock remains deeply discounted, despite owning a portfolio of cannabis cultivation facilities, maintaining one of the strongest balance sheets in the REIT sector, and paying a very large dividend, yielding over 10%.

The reason is simple.

Cannabis remains a very challenged sector. Operators have faced severe tax burdens, limited access to capital, regulatory uncertainty, pricing pressure, and in some cases, distress. NLCP has not been immune to these issues. A few of its tenants have struggled, three properties are currently available for lease, and AFFO per share has declined recently as a result.

This is why the stock is so cheap, but there has also been a major positive development.

The proposed rescheduling of cannabis could eliminate the 280E tax burden for many operators, which would materially improve tenant cash flows, profitability, balance sheets, and ultimately, rent coverage.

This matters because the main risk to NLCP has always been tenant credit quality.

If tenant credit improves, then NLCP’s valuation could rerate materially higher.

Even after the recent rally, NLCP remains priced at a very low multiple, offers a double-digit dividend yield, and has a net cash balance sheet. This is not a typical high-yielding REIT that is overleveraged and being forced to cut the dividend. NLCP has very little debt, significant liquidity, and a management team that owns a lot of stock alongside shareholders.

To better understand what this catalyst could mean for NLCP, I recently interviewed Anthony Coniglio, the CEO of NewLake Capital Partners.

The discussion made clear that rescheduling could be a major positive, but also that this remains a nuanced recovery story. The opportunity is not simply about one regulatory change. It is about improving tenant credit, protecting the dividend, eventually restarting growth, and potentially expanding the investor base over time.

Below are my main takeaways from the interview, followed by the full Q&A.

My Takeaways From The Interview

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Important Note:

I am spending this week at the REIT Week Conference in NYC, where I will be meeting with many REIT management teams. As a result, I may be a bit slower than usual to answer questions. Thank you for your patience. I expect to share exclusive insights from several REIT CEO interviews later this week. Stay tuned!

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Chiron Real Estate: A New Opportunity?

Many of you have asked me about Chiron Real Estate (XRN), formerly known as Global Medical REIT.

It is easy to see why.

This is a REIT that we know well. We previously owned it back in 2024 and earned a nice profit on it, but we have not owned it since.

Now, the story has changed quite a bit.

The company has a new name, new management, and a new strategy. It is no longer just a secondary and tertiary market medical office REIT. Management is now selling some of its legacy medical office buildings, raising capital through a convertible preferred equity issuance, and using the proceeds to rapidly accelerate its repositioning toward senior housing.

That could create a lot of value.

Publicly traded senior housing REITs today trade at very high valuations. Welltower (WELL), as an example, trades at 34x FFO, and by some estimates, at a large premium to NAV. Investors are willing to pay a very high multiple for senior housing exposure because the sector enjoys powerful long-term tailwinds from the aging population, limited new supply, and improving occupancy.

Chiron, on the other hand, trades at just around 10x FFO.

The discount is not hard to understand. It is a small-cap REIT. It has historically focused on medical office buildings in secondary and tertiary markets. It recently cut its dividend. It is still dealing with poor market sentiment, uncertainty following the leadership transition, and skepticism over whether this new strategy will work.

But that is also what makes it interesting.

If the transformation works and Chiron gradually becomes recognized as a senior housing growth story rather than a legacy medical office REIT, the multiple could expand materially. Even a partial rerating could lead to strong returns for shareholders.

The Maewyn Investment Is A Strong Vote Of Confidence

This is essentially what Maewyn Capital Partners appears to be betting on.

As another analyst has noted, Maewyn committed up to $100 million of convertible preferred capital to Chiron at a $43 conversion price. That was a meaningful premium to where the stock was trading at the time. The investment carries a 6% coupon initially, but that coupon steps up over time if the preferred is not converted or redeemed. Maewyn also gets board representation through Charles Fitzgerald, a very sophisticated REIT investor with decades of experience in listed real estate.

In other words, this does not look like passive capital chasing yield. This looks like a specialist investor making a concentrated bet that Chiron can unlock value through this strategic repositioning.

The structure is important. If Chiron executes well and the stock price rises above the conversion threshold, Maewyn can convert into common equity and participate in the upside. If the stock does not work, the preferred coupon becomes increasingly expensive for Chiron over time, creating pressure for a resolution. This gives Maewyn downside protection, while still giving it meaningful upside if the thesis plays out.

Chiron, on the other hand, gets relatively cheap capital today, betting that it will allow it to transform the REIT in a way that will create a lot of value.

Insiders have also been buying shares, including recent purchases after the dividend cut. The dollar amounts were not huge, but the timing is notable. Insider purchases immediately after a painful dividend cut and strategic pivot are a positive signal.

So we agree that there is something compelling here.

Chiron is cheap. It has a credible new strategy. It has attracted capital from a sophisticated REIT investor. It is moving toward a property sector that the market currently loves. If interest rates decline over the coming years and if management executes well, the stock could do very well.

Why We Still Prefer Other Healthcare REITs

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Important Note:

I am spending this week at the REIT Week Conference in NYC, where I will be meeting with many REIT management teams. As a result, I may be a bit slower than usual to answer questions. Thank you for your patience. I expect to share exclusive insights from several REIT CEO interviews later this week. Stay tuned!

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Earnings Update: Healthcare REITs (Q1 2026)

As we’ve explained previously, healthcare real estate is made up of four primary sub-sectors:

• Medical outpatient buildings (”MOBs”)

• Life science / labspace

• Hospitals

• Senior housing / care facilities

By far the fundamentally strongest sub-sector is senior-focused housing, which is effectively a hybrid between residential and medical real estate. Aging demographics and long-term growth in the elderly population creates an incredibly strong secular tailwind for this property type, and supply growth has not significantly picked up in response yet.

Within months, the national average occupancy rate for senior housing should rise over 90% for the first time in decades.

The weakest sub-sector is the life science space, which is still struggling amid oversupply and various leasing demand headwinds ranging from government funding cuts to elevated interest rates.

Fortunately, the pipeline of new supply coming to market has shrank to an extremely low level, but weak demand still isn’t enough to absorb the little new space being delivered.

Net absorption has now been negative in the life science space for three years. The pandemic leasing boom in 2020-2021 was powerful but brief, while the development boom thereafter was even more powerful and sustained.

That has transformed the life science sub-sector from a consistently tight, low-vacancy market into a boom-bust space.

Right now, we are definitely in the “bust” phase of that cycle.

Vacancy rates continue creeping higher, while asking rent rates slowly decline.

Tenants are firmly in control in lease negotiations, a situation that should persist until vacancy rates materially fall.

That said, given the prowess of American research universities as well as the robust US venture capital industry, we do believe the biotech sector will rebound -- eventually.

When it does, probably years in the future, there will be another boom in life science real estate. Until then, we take comfort in owning the highest quality REIT in this sub-sector. When life science does rebound, Alexandria Real Estate Equities (ARE) will lead the charge.

The fundamentals of medical outpatient buildings (”MOBs”) and net leased hospitals fall somewhere between the extremes of red-hot senior housing and cold-as-ice life science.

MOB asking rent rates increased 1.6% year-over-year. That slow growth rate is not unusual for this conservative, slow-growth sub-sector of healthcare real estate.

The national average vacancy rate is still almost 10%, which is where it historically tends to be.

It tends to be difficult to get MOBs 100% full (unless they are single-tenant) because there are only so many types of medical practices. For example, you often can’t put two cardiologists or two orthopedic doctors in the same building together. Sometimes lease contracts stipulate that no other equivalent practices can co-locate in the same building.

After some temporary weakness in leasing in the first half of 2025, MOB demand has rebounded and has now exceeded new supply additions over the last two quarters.

MOB is an extremely stable and moderate-growth sub-sector, which makes us highly confident in the solid return prospects of our pick in this space, Healthcare Realty (HR), especially after the management shakeup and dividend reduction.

Finally, net leased hospitals are performing moderately well, but the risk is heavily dependent on the level of interest rates. Most hospital tenant-operators are backed by private equity sponsors, and these for-profit operators tend to carry high leverage. Even as Medical Property Trust’s (MPT) balance sheet improves, the REIT’s tenant base remains sensitive to the movement of rates.

Recently, we got a reminder of the institutional attraction to healthcare real estate, especially net leased properties occupied by financially strong tenants, with Blue Owl Capital’s (OWL) ~$2.4 billion acquisition of Sila Realty Trust (SILA).

Year-to-date, our former holding of SILA, which was also by far our largest healthcare holding, has been the best performer, while HR has likewise doubled the performance of the real estate index (VNQ):

ARE, MPT, and our newest healthcare holding of National Health Investors (NHI) have all had tepid performance so far this year, each driven by idiosyncratic factors.

ARE is struggling with weak demand and rising vacancies in its core markets.

MPT is vulnerable to elevated interest rates due to its PE-backed tenants.

And NHI was performing well until the announcement of its skilled nursing facility dispositions, which will drag down FFO per share growth in the short-term but ultimately make the REIT stronger and higher quality.

With that, let’s turn to the earnings updates for our four healthcare REITs:

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Important Note:

I am spending this week at the REIT Week Conference in NYC, where I will be meeting with many REIT management teams. As a result, I may be a bit slower than usual to answer questions. Thank you for your patience. I expect to share exclusive insights from several REIT CEO interviews later this week. Stay tuned!

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Earnings Update: Retail REITs (Q1 2026)

This year, the market has vindicated our long-held conviction in brick-and-mortar retail.

While e-commerce continues to grow rapidly, the majority of retailers have found that an omnichannel strategy including both online and physical stores is optimal. Robust consumer spending at all kinds of stores and restaurants has kept retailer demand high, while supply growth has been extremely limited.

Despite the stagnant performance of apartments in recent years, multifamily and self-storage properties still trade at lower cap rates than shopping centers. Apartment and storage buildings can be densified vertically, while most shopping centers require lots of land (including for flat parking lots) and follow a horizontal design.

Thus, developers have continued to focus mostly on building apartments and storage facilities rather than shopping centers.

That situation is unlikely to change anytime soon, which makes existing shopping centers increasingly valuable.

Institutional investors have taken notice of the value proposition in this space.

Our favorite shopping center REIT over the last few years, Whitestone REIT (WSR), recently agreed to be acquired by Ares Management (ARES) for $19 per share -- significantly higher than the ~$15 per share offer previously entertained.

The Whitestone REIT story is a sweet success for us after a multi-year bear market for REITs.

But actually, all of our retail REITs are performing well this year, easily beating the broader real estate index (VNQ):

After years in which the market’s sole focus was direct beneficiaries of the AI revolution, there is now some broadening out to second-order and third-order beneficiaries.

The wealth effect from a surging stock market is fueling strong consumer spending, which is driving solid demand for space in shopping centers.

Note from this chart not just the 5%+ nominal retail sales growth but also the solid, ~1.5% YoY growth in real (inflation-adjusted) retail sales. This indicates that retailers are seeing real, volumetric growth in sales, not just higher prices.

That said, with national retail occupancy high at over 94%, rising asking rent rates caused some turnover in Q1. Net absorption dipped into negative territory, pushing occupancy slightly lower.

However, it is worth pointing out that the pandemic caused a shift in demand for retail space based on its location within a city layout.

Downtown retail used to be the prime location for retailers, exhibited by low vacancy rates, while suburban retail space held relatively less appeal. The pandemic caused that situation to reverse.

Increasingly over the last several years, suburban shopping centers have become the more popular location for retailers, while downtown space holds less appeal.

Hybrid work has led to workers spending more time in the suburbs and less time downtown. Retailers naturally want to be where consumers are.

Fortunately, aside from some urban mixed-use centers in Federal Realty’s (FRT) portfolio and some of Macerich’s (MAC) urban malls, our retail REITs are overwhelmingly focused on suburban shopping centers.

Also fortunate is the fact that the retail construction pipeline is extremely low (0.3% of existing supply) and still declining.

As long as demand remains steady, which we believe it will for the foreseeable future, pricing power should remain firmly in landlords’ favor.

With that, let’s get to the earnings updates for our four retail REITs:

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So far this year, U.S. REITs (VNQ) have surged by about 11%, and we think that part of this is due to the emerging AI immunity trade.

The idea is simple.

AI is rapidly disrupting many traditional businesses. It reduces barriers to entry, increases competition, compresses margins, and makes it harder to predict which companies will still be dominant 10 years from now.

But real estate is different.

AI cannot replace an apartment, a warehouse, a grocery store, a self-storage facility, a data center, or a well-located piece of land.

In many cases, AI may even increase demand for certain types of real estate as it accelerates business formation, mobility, ecommerce, data consumption, automation, and the need for essential infrastructure.

This is one of the reasons why capital has begun rotating back into U.S. REITs.

But European REITs have largely missed out on this rally.

In fact, many European REITs have moved in the opposite direction this year as investors have focused almost entirely on rising interest rate expectations. The war in the Middle East has pushed oil and gas prices higher, inflation expectations have risen, and the market has started to price in higher financing costs again.

This has caused European REITs to sell off, even as their U.S. peers have rallied.

We think that this creates an opportunity.

European REITs appear to have missed out on the AI immunity trade. Investors have focused on the near-term rate shock instead of the long-term fundamentals.

This is not unusual.

The European market often reacts with a delay relative to the U.S. market, and this can create opportunities for astute investors who are willing to act before the same narrative spreads across the Atlantic.

The recent rise in rates is, of course, a setback, but we continue to think that this will prove temporary.

Before the recent spike in oil prices, real-time inflation indicators were already very low. Truflation had inflation running at roughly 1%, and this was before the full impact of the next wave of AI adoption had even started to flow through the economy.

We continue to believe that AI will become one of the biggest deflationary forces of this century.

It should lower the cost of labor, software, research, legal work, accounting, customer service, logistics, marketing, and many other services. It should allow companies to do more with less, increase productivity, and intensify competition across many industries.

This does not mean that the transition will be smooth.

It may be painful for many businesses and workers. But from a macro perspective, if AI causes major productivity gains and margin pressure across large parts of the economy, we think that it will ultimately push inflation and interest rates lower.

This would be very bullish for REITs, especially in Europe, where valuations are exceptionally low today.

We are therefore using this weakness to increase our exposure to two of our highest conviction European REITs.

Purchase 1:

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Net lease REITs have remained surprisingly resilient in 2026 in the face of another spike in interest rates and inflation.

Recall from previous reports on the net lease sub-sector that these REITs are often perceived as some of the most sensitive to swings in interest rates. Our research has found that net lease REIT fundamentals are not, on average, any more sensitive to interest rates than for most other REITs. But when it comes to stock prices, perception is reality.

That’s what makes the resilient rebound of net lease REITs so pleasantly surprising this year.

The sole net lease ETF (NETL) has generated 12.5% in total returns YTD, compared to the broader real estate sector’s (VNQ) 8.8% and the S&P 500’s (SPY) ~8%.

If interest rates and inflation were still trending downward, as they were for much of last year, then this would not be surprising.

But the opposite is happening.

The conflict in Iran and closure of Hormuz has pushed rates and inflation to their highest levels in years.

To cut to the chase, the answer to this anomaly is that the market is looking through this inflationary spike. While the current environment does raise net lease REITs’ cost of new long-term debt in the short term, the macroeconomic elements are simply not in place for a sustained swell of prices across the economy.

Growth in the money supply is low, wage growth is low, job growth and population growth are stagnant, and most consumers are being forced to cut back on everyday spending due to higher gas prices.

The economy is overwhelmingly being driven by AI-related capex and affluent consumer spending.

This kind of environment does not lend itself well to broad-based and sustained inflation.

What we have instead is a temporary inflationary shock.

This shock has pulled up one-year-ahead inflation expectations by a significant amount, but three-year-ahead expectations have only risen off their typical 3% level by a small amount.

We continue to believe that the current inflationary spike will be temporary, although we can’t predict how significant it will be during this temporary period because of unknowable factors related to geopolitics.

Widespread belief in the transience of this painful inflationary spike explains why REITs and especially net lease REITs are staging a nice comeback this year.

It also helps that net lease REITs, along with the broader REIT sector, had reached very low valuations at the end of 2025, especially relative to the S&P 500.

We think net lease REITs have more room to rally and should exhibit solid fundamentals this year, turning in mid-single-digit growth on average.

With that said, let’s get to the earnings updates for our four net lease REITs:

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We recently began tracking other active managers of REITs and non-REIT real estate stocks.

While we all like to think of ourselves as wholly original thinkers, the truth is that we are always listening to the ideas of others and borrowing (or stealing) the most compelling ones. That’s just how the human brain works. In his book How Innovation Works, Matt Ridley describes innovation not as something wholly unique or sui generis but rather a process of ideas interbreeding in new ways.

We watch what other smart REIT investors do not to mindlessly copy them, but rather to understand their thinking and their levels of conviction.

We don’t ride any investor’s coattails, no matter how much we respect them.

For example, we pay very close attention to Jonathan Litt of Land & Buildings, as we find him an incisive and contrarian thinker in the REIT space. But we still disagree with Litt at times, and we recognize that he (like all investors) can make mistakes.

With that said, let’s take a look at the Q1 2026 trades of the select group of active REIT investors we follow.

Starwood Capital Group

Billionaire commercial real estate investor Barry Sternlicht leads this investment group that focuses primarily on direct property ownership. That’s what makes Starwood’s REIT investments so interesting. The company is not a dedicated REIT fund. It does not need to own any REITs at all. At times in the past, the company has not owned any individual stocks or REITs at all.

So, the fact that it does allocate capital to REITs is a signal that Sternlicht and his top executives are very bullish on them as long-term investments.

Most of Starwood’s handful of holdings have been held multiple years now with occasional additions over time.

As you can see, there were only two trades in Q1.

Starwood participated in the IPO of Janus Living (JAN), a pure-play senior housing REIT externally managed by Healthpeak Properties (DOC). They purchased ~$12 million of shares and are already up 13% on their cost basis. Given JAN’s ~28x FFO multiple, this is certainly a signal of the investor bullishness on senior housing.

Demographics are destiny, and the supply-demand balance is tilted very favorably toward landlords today. Note that we recently invested in National Health Investors (NHI) to get cheaper exposure to this sector. You can read our investment thesis by clicking here.

Starwood also sold its entire stake in Veris Residential (VRE) after the REIT agreed to be acquired by an investor group led by private equity firm Affinius Capital for a 23% premium to its pre-acquisition pricing.

Overall, however, Starwood’s biggest bet is on a recovery in Sunbelt multifamily via its large holdings in Camden Property Trust (CPT), Mid-America Apartment Communities (MAA), and Nexpoint Residential (NXRT), together making up 63.6% of the REIT portfolio.

Land & Buildings Investment Management

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We are now approaching the second half of 2026, and I think that this is an especially important time for High Yield Landlord.

After several difficult years, things finally seem to be changing for REITs.

The sector is up about 10% so far this year. M&A activity is heating up, and we have already benefited from three REIT buyouts in 2026 alone. Supply is getting absorbed in many property sectors, rent growth should accelerate into 2027, and the “AI immunity trade” appears to be benefiting REITs as more investors look for real assets that are less exposed to AI disruption.

This is exactly the type of environment that we have been waiting for.

REITs remain historically cheap, but the fundamentals are now improving, and the market is slowly starting to recognize it. This creates a window of opportunity.

That is why now is the time for us to double down on our efforts.

We want to make sure that we are not leaving any stone unturned. We are increasing our research efforts, meeting more management teams, expanding our educational content, and exploring new opportunities that could add value to the service.

Our goal remains the same: to help you capitalize on the recovery while REITs are still undervalued.

1. More Conferences And Management Meetings

The first major initiative is that I will be attending more REIT conferences and meeting more management teams in person.

In early June, I will attend REIT Week, which is organized by NAREIT. This is the biggest REIT conference in the United States. It brings together a large number of REIT management teams, institutional investors, analysts, and other real estate professionals.

The last time I attended the conference was in 2023. You can see me here on the right side!

The cost is steep. The registration alone is roughly $3,000 per person, before even accounting for flights, hotels, and other travel expenses.

But I think that it is well worth it.

If attending the conference helps us uncover even just one new opportunity, avoid one major mistake, or gain more conviction in one of our existing holdings, it can easily pay for itself many times over.

I already have meetings set with VICI Properties (VICI), Agree Realty (ADC), and BSR REIT (HOM.U:CA), and I expect to meet many other management teams as well.

Please let me know if you have any specific questions that you would like me to ask them.

I will give you full access to what I learn from these meetings, including my key takeaways, the most interesting comments from management teams, and any new opportunities that may come out of the conference.

Then, in September, I will attend ReThink, which is organized by EPRA.

This is the biggest REIT conference in Europe, and it often also features major American REITs such as Realty Income (O) and Prologis (PLD).

This is particularly important for us because our International Portfolio has become a bigger part of High Yield Landlord over time.

We think that international REITs can offer excellent opportunities because they are often less researched, more inefficiently priced, and sometimes trade at even steeper discounts than U.S. REITs.

This is why I want to keep building relationships with more international management teams and better understand the local market dynamics.

Finally, later in 2026, I expect to attend a major REIT conference in Asia.

This is an area where we are currently underexposed. We do not own any Asian REITs in our International Portfolio at the moment, and I would like to change that if we can find the right opportunities.

Asia has many large and well-established REIT markets, including Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, and Australia.

But tax rules, currency risks, governance standards, lease structures, and sponsor incentives can vary materially from one country to another. This is why I think that it is important to study these markets more closely before investing.

The goal is not to buy something just for the sake of geographic diversification. The goal is to find truly compelling opportunities that can improve our risk-to-reward and make our International Portfolio stronger.

2. A New 12-Part Video Course On REIT Investing

The second major initiative is educational.

Earlier this year, I released my book on REIT investing, called The REIT Advantage.

The book includes a foreword by Ed Pitoniak, the CEO of VICI Properties, and it also received praise from several other REIT CEOs. That meant a lot to me because the goal of the book was not just to explain REITs from the perspective of an investor. It was also to give readers a deeper understanding of how these companies actually operate, how they create value, and why listed real estate can be such a powerful long-term investment vehicle.

As promised, we gave the book for free to all members of High Yield Landlord.

You can still get it on this page.

But the book was only the first step. In the second half of 2026, we plan to take our educational material to a new level with the release of a 12-part video course on REIT investing.

The goal of this course is to help you better understand how to analyze REITs, how to value them, how to think about leverage, how to assess management teams, how to compare property sectors, and how to build a portfolio that can compound wealth over the long run.

This will not be a generic investing course. It will be focused specifically on REITs and real assets, with practical examples based on the same framework that we use at High Yield Landlord.

The course will again be given for free to members of High Yield Landlord.

Outside of the service, we plan to sell it for $900.

This means that members will receive yet another valuable resource at no additional cost, and I think that it will make the subscription even more valuable.

My goal is not just to give you stock picks. It is to help you become a better REIT investor.

3. More Access To Select Private Opportunities

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Dear Landlords,

I want to extend a warm welcome to all our new members!

As a reminder, our most recent “Portfolio Review“ was shared with the members of High Yield Landlord on April 2nd, 2026. You can read it by clicking here.

You can also access our three portfolios on Google Sheets:

Access our Portfolio Sheets

New members can start researching positions marked as Strong Buy and Buy while considering the corresponding risk ratings.

============================

TRADE ALERT - Core Portfolio May 2026 (New Investment)

Today, we are selling Centerspace (CSR) for a quick near-10% gain since our purchase just about a month ago.

The original plan was not to sell this early. We bought Centerspace because we thought that the risk-to-reward was very compelling, especially given the high odds of a near-term buyout.

But something important has changed, and this has forced us to reevaluate our thesis.

At the same time, another more compelling opportunity has emerged. Since our cash is currently limited, we need to sell a holding to unlock capital, and Centerspace is now the most logical source of funds.

What Changed?

Our thesis for Centerspace focused heavily on its high likelihood of getting bought out in the near term.

The REIT is undergoing a strategic review, and until recently, it was the biggest position of Land & Buildings, an activist REIT investment firm that was pressuring the company to pursue a sale to unlock value.

Centerspace first confirmed this strategic review on November 11, 2025, noting that its board had initiated the review earlier in the fall. The review was broad and included a potential sale, merger, other business combination, or simply continuing to execute on its standalone strategy.

This sounded promising.

However, we just learned that Land & Buildings exited its entire position in the last quarter.

That is a big change. Land & Buildings is a specialist REIT activist investor. If they thought that a buyout was still likely, I doubt that they would have sold their entire position, especially since they continue to hold other residential REIT investments.

To me, this clearly suggests that they now believe that a deal is unlikely to occur. They are giving up on it.

That does not mean that a transaction is impossible, but it materially reduces the odds, in my opinion.

The Strategic Review Is Taking Longer Than Expected

The lack of progress is also concerning. Centerspace did not provide any meaningful update on the strategic review in the first quarter. That matters because if a sales process had strong buyer interest and a clear path forward, I do not think that it would typically drag on this long without any real progress being communicated.

To be clear, strategic reviews can take time. But the longer this goes without an update, the more likely it becomes that the company simply continues to operate independently or pursues smaller asset sales instead of a full company sale.

I also noticed a small but important detail in its newest investor presentation. Centerspace now says that it trades at only a 10% discount to consensus NAV.

We think that the actual discount is closer to 25%, because consensus NAV estimates often suffer from anchoring bias. Sell-side analysts tend to anchor their NAV estimates to the current share price, especially for smaller REITs with limited coverage.

But the fact that Centerspace itself highlights only a 10% discount to consensus NAV is telling. It makes the case for a buyout appear far less obvious. If management and the board believe that the discount is only 10%, they may not see much benefit in selling the entire company, especially if buyers are not willing to pay a meaningful premium.

Asset Sales Now Seem More Likely Than A Full Buyout

My updated base case is that Centerspace will likely sell a few assets, use part of the proceeds to buy back shares, and use the rest to pay down debt.

That would still be positive.

But it is not the same upside catalyst as a full company sale at a large premium to the current share price.

As a reminder, Centerspace is still quite leveraged, with debt to EBITDA of roughly 7.3x. That high leverage was acceptable to us when we thought that a buyout was likely, but it is less attractive if the company simply remains independent.

The risk-to-reward has therefore worsened. At the same time, the share price has surged nearly 10% since we bought it less than a month ago.

Following this recent outperformance, Centerspace is no longer trading at a material discount to higher-quality peers, despite having a lot more leverage.

Why Not Hold For More Upside?

Centerspace is not a bad REIT.

It owns apartments in generally resilient Midwest and Mountain West markets. Its assets should benefit over time from the same long-term housing shortage that supports the broader residential REIT sector.

But today, I think we can do better.

For higher leveraged residential exposure, I would rather own BSR REIT (HOM.U:CA). It has exposure to markets with better long-term growth prospects, trades at a lower valuation, and its management has already proven its willingness to sell major assets to aggressively buy back stock.

For safer residential exposure, I would rather own Camden (CPT) or UDR (UDR). They own better assets on average, have lower leverage, and trade at fairly similar valuations.

Centerspace was attractive primarily as a potential buyout play. I now think that this outcome is a lot less likely. Therefore, we are happy to sell at a profit and reallocate the capital into a more compelling opportunity.

That opportunity is:

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Dear Landlords,

I want to extend a warm welcome to all our new members!

As a reminder, our most recent “Portfolio Review“ was shared with the members of High Yield Landlord on April 2nd, 2026. You can read it by clicking here.

You can also access our three portfolios on Google Sheets:

Access our Portfolio Sheets

New members can start researching positions marked as Strong Buy and Buy while considering the corresponding risk ratings.

============================

Time To Buy Hotel REITs?

Most REITs have been strongly recovering so far this year. They are up about 10% on average, and many property sectors are up closer to 20% as rent growth improves, interest rate fears slowly subside, and capital rotates toward hard assets that are less exposed to AI disruption.

Even after that rebound, REITs still remain undervalued in many cases and offer meaningful upside potential.

However, as prices recover, it is of course getting harder to find the steep discounts that we got used to seeing over the past couple of years.

That has led a few of you to ask me whether now could be a good time to invest in hotel REITs.

I understand the appeal.

Hotel REITs typically trade at some of the lowest multiples in the REIT sector. Even the highest quality blue chip in the space, Host Hotels (HST), trades at just around 10x FFO, which is far below the typical multiple of a large, high quality REIT. Many of the smaller and lesser-known hotel REITs also trade at steep discounts to NAV and offer high dividend yields. Pebblebrook Hotel Trust (PEB) is one example, trading at a 40% discount.

We have also seen hotel REIT buyouts in the recent past. That is another reason why the sector draws interest. When a hotel REIT gets taken private, the premium can be very large, which reinforces the perception that public market pricing may be too pessimistic. Sotherly Hotels (SOHO) was bought out at a huge 140% premium!

All of this seems to indicate that hotels could now offer a compelling opportunity.

So why not invest in them?

Cheap Does Not Always Mean Attractive

In short, hotels are among my least favorite property types.

Yes, they are cheap, but in my opinion, they are cheap for very good reasons.

Hotels are management-intensive, require substantial capital expenditures, are highly cyclical, and face increasing pressure from disruptive technologies and the current political climate. This makes them very different from the types of real estate that I generally want to own for the long run.

A low multiple is not enough to make an investment attractive.

Cyclical assets deserve to trade at lower multiples, especially if we are potentially approaching the peak of the cycle, and a good portion of current earnings may not be sustainable through the next downturn.

Moreover, that multiple should be especially low if there are also long-term concerns about the supply and demand outlook for the property type.

That is exactly the situation that I see with hotels.

Hotels Are Operating Businesses, Not Passive Real Estate

The first issue is that hotels are not really passive real estate investments.

They are operating businesses wrapped in real estate.

When you own an apartment building, a net lease property, or a shopping center, you sign leases and then collect rent. There is still work involved, but the revenue stream is relatively contractual and predictable.

Hotels are very different.

Rooms must be priced daily. Staff must be managed daily. Customer satisfaction must be maintained daily. Occupancy can change overnight. Margins can swing quickly. Performance depends not just on the quality of the real estate, but also on operations, brand positioning, labor management, and constant execution.

That makes hotels much more management-intensive than most property sectors. This is one reason why I do not view them as especially attractive real estate investments. The more operational complexity there is, the less durable the investment tends to be.

Hotels Require Heavy Ongoing Capital Spending

The second issue is capital intensity.

Hotels wear out quickly. Guests expect updated rooms, attractive common areas, modern technology, good food and beverage offerings, and a high service standard. To remain competitive, hotel owners must constantly reinvest into renovations, upgrades, and maintenance.

This is not optional. It is a permanent feature of the business model. As a result, headline cash flow numbers can overstate the true long-term earning power of hotel assets because a significant portion of that cash flow needs to be reinvested just to maintain competitiveness.

That is very different from many other forms of real estate, where maintenance capital is lower, and the cash flow is more durable.

So while a hotel REIT may look cheap on FFO, I do not think investors should take that at face value. The real free cash flow is often much less impressive than it first appears.

Hotel Earnings Are Highly Cyclical

The third issue is cyclicality. Hotels do not benefit from long lease agreements.

That is a major weakness.

If the economy weakens, consumers pull back on discretionary spending, corporate travel budgets get cut, or tourism softens, hotel earnings can fall very quickly. There is no long-term lease protecting the landlord. Pricing resets every night.

This is why hotel REITs deserve to trade at lower multiples than apartment REITs, industrial REITs, net lease REITs, and others.

A meaningful portion of hotel earnings at the top of the cycle is often not sustainable. Investors who buy based on current earnings alone can easily end up overpaying for what looked like a low multiple.

This is particularly important today because we may already be relatively late in the cycle. If that is the case, then hotel cash flows may be closer to peak earnings than normalized earnings.

That makes the apparent cheapness less compelling.

The Supply Side Is a Major Concern

If I am going to invest in a risky cyclical property sector, I at least want it to be supply-constrained.

Hotels generally are not. In many markets, it is not particularly difficult to build new hotels if the economics justify it. The barriers to entry are simply not very high compared to other property types that benefit from greater zoning restrictions, irreplaceable locations, licensing limitations, or other structural constraints.

But even more importantly, hotels no longer just compete with other hotels. They compete with Airbnb-like alternatives and other short-term rental platforms that have created a huge new source of room supply. Anyone with an extra room, apartment, or house can increasingly compete with traditional hotels.

I think AI will make this even worse over time. AI is great at breaking barriers to entry. It makes operations easier, cheaper, and more scalable. In the case of alternative accommodations, AI can help with pricing, customer service, check-in, check-out, guest communication, screening, cleaning coordination, and marketing.

In other words, AI may make hosting easier than ever before. That could bring even more supply into the market and intensify competition for traditional hotels.

This is the exact opposite of what I want from a long-term real estate investment. I want assets where scarcity protects value. Hotels do not offer that.

Demand Is Also Becoming Less Attractive

The demand side worries me as well.

Near-term international travel to the United States has weakened as many foreign travelers choose to spend their tourism money elsewhere. I do not say this in a political way. It is simply a reality that rhetoric, policy uncertainty, and broader sentiment can affect travel demand. Hotels are highly exposed to those shifts, and it is negatively impacting the American hotel market right now.

Beyond that, business travel also faces long-term pressure.

Zoom and other virtual meeting platforms have reduced the need for many business trips. In fact, with AI now helping with translation, notes, analysis, etc., it is often easier and more effective to hold a meeting digitally than in person.

Business travel is not disappearing, but it does not need to disappear to hurt hotels. It only needs to be structurally lower at the margin. That matters because hotels used to benefit significantly from business demand that was relatively recurring and less seasonal.

Booking Platforms Are Taking More of the Economics

Another concern is that booking websites are taking an ever bigger cut of hotel revenue.

Hotel flags and brands are losing some of their value because consumers are less loyal and more focused on comparing options across platforms. With AI tools improving search and recommendation engines, this trend could intensify further.

Instead of going directly to a hotel brand, many consumers now start with a booking platform, compare properties side by side, and choose whichever one looks best for the price. That weakens pricing power and shifts power away from the hotel owner.

It also means more of the economics are being captured by intermediaries.

Again, this is not what I want in a long-term real estate investment. I want the owner of the hard asset to retain pricing power and customer value. In the hotel business, too much of that is leaking away.

Why I Prefer Other Cyclical Assets: My Top Picks

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This is Jussi. I just returned from Ukraine, and I wanted to give you an update on our latest Freedom Convoy, as well as our upcoming July convoy.

First, I want to thank you.

Thanks in large part to the generosity of High Yield Landlord members, we have now raised about €105,000 for our July convoy.

Originally, our goal was to raise enough money to buy 4 fully equipped trucks for Ukrainian frontline units.

But because of your generosity, we have already reached that target and are now increasing our goal to 6 trucks.

Before going further, I wanted to share a short video from our latest convoy so you can see what this looks like on the ground: (you can see me standing in the background at the beginning of the video!)

This latest convoy was especially meaningful because, during this trip, our organization crossed a major milestone:

Help99 has now delivered over 1,000 trucks to Ukraine since the start of the war.

That is a number that is hard to fully process.

When this started, we were just a small group trying to help however we could. We bought vehicles with our own money, filled them with supplies, and drove them into Ukraine ourselves.

Now, several years later, this effort has grown into something much larger. Over 1,000 vehicles have been delivered, most of which have gone directly to frontline units that desperately need them.

I am proud of this, but I am also humbled by it because none of this would have been possible without people like you.

My Recent Trip To Ukraine

This latest trip was also different from some of the previous ones.

This time, I did not only go to Kyiv. I continued farther south to Odesa.

Odesa is a beautiful city, but it is also being hit far more often than Kyiv at the moment.

We had one especially scary night there, with explosions heard in close proximity. It was a powerful reminder of what Ukrainians are living through every day.

For us, this is a temporary experience. We go there, deliver vehicles, meet the soldiers, and eventually return home.

For them, this is their daily reality.

That contrast never stops affecting me. It is easy to become numb to the war when we only read about it from a distance. But when you are there, when you hear the explosions, when you meet the soldiers risking their lives for us, when you see the need with your own eyes, it becomes impossible to ignore.

And this is why we keep going back.

The July Convoy Is Now Even Bigger

For the July convoy, we had originally planned to support 4 units with 4 vehicles.

But thanks to the strong support we have received so far, we are now aiming to deliver 6 fully equipped trucks.

In fact, this campaign is already producing results. The first truck funded by this July campaign was delivered early as part of my latest convoy because the need was urgent and the vehicle was ready to go. Here it is in Kyiv:

The remaining vehicles will be delivered in July.

The two additional vehicles will go to:

• Azov, one of Ukraine’s most famous and battle-hardened units

• Phalanx, a unit in which one of my friends is currently fighting

These are exactly the types of units that need this support the most.

The trucks will be equipped with the kind of gear that makes them useful near the front, including mud tires, night vision, drone jammers, camouflage, and critical supplies.

But we are not fully there yet.

We Are Still Missing About $27,000

We have already raised about €105,000 ($122,000), but to complete the expanded goal of 6 trucks, we are still missing about €23,000 ($27,000).

That final amount would allow us to fund the two additional vehicles and bring them to Ukraine in July.

I know that I have asked for your help before, but I also know that this community understands what is at stake.

For most of us, donating $100, $500, or even $1,000 will not change our lives.

But for the soldiers receiving these vehicles, it can make a real difference.

A truck can help evacuate a wounded soldier.

It can help move a unit out of danger.

It can help deliver supplies to people who otherwise might not get them.

It can save lives.

And ultimately, it will help defeat Russia.

That is why I believe this is one of the most impactful causes we can support.

As a reminder, we have also set up a few incentives for donors. All donors will receive a badge as a keepsake of their contribution. Depending on your donation amount, you can also have your country’s flag, company logo, or a personal message placed on one of the trucks. And for our largest donors, there is also the opportunity to join me on a future convoy to Ukraine and see the impact firsthand. You can learn more about all these incentives by clicking here.

But the real reward is knowing that your support is going directly to the people who need it most, and that it can make a real difference near the front.

Click here to visit our website and donate.

Every Dollar Goes Directly To The Cause

As I have said before, this is the best kind of charity in my opinion.

The volunteers, including myself, work for free. We take the risks ourselves. We contribute our own money, time, and resources.

There is no waste. There is no bloated organization.

There is only a direct line from your donation to the soldiers who need help.

And now, with just about $27,000 still missing, we have the opportunity to make this July convoy even more impactful than originally planned.

Please Consider Helping Us Reach The Finish Line

If you have already donated, thank you. Truly.

Your generosity is the reason why we were able to expand this convoy from 4 trucks to 6.

If you have not yet donated, I hope that you will consider doing so now.

We are very close to reaching the expanded target, and even a smaller donation can help us get there.

Together, we have already helped deliver over 1,000 trucks to Ukraine.

Now, let’s help deliver 6 more in July.

Click here to visit our website and donate.

Thank you for your support.

Jussi
Thank you for reading! If you found this valuable, please press the ♡ button to help the algorithm. Better yet, restack it to help us reach a wider audience.

Dear Landlords,

I want to extend a warm welcome to all our new members!

As a reminder, our most recent “Portfolio Review“ was shared with the members of High Yield Landlord on April 2nd, 2026. You can read it by clicking here.

You can also access our three portfolios on Google Sheets:

Access our Portfolio Sheets

New members can start researching positions marked as Strong Buy and Buy while considering the corresponding risk ratings.

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TRADE ALERT - Trimming Helios Towers And Reinvesting Into Shurgard Self Storage

We invested heavily in Helios Towers (HTWS / HTWSF) in 2022 and 2023 when it was trading right around 100 British pence per share.

Our average cost basis is actually slightly below that, at 93 pence per share.

Today, just a few years later, Helios is trading at roughly 242 pence per share, and as a result of this huge surge, it has become our largest position by far, representing about 16% of our International Portfolio.

This has been one of our best investments of the past few years.

The share price has increased because the company’s cash flow has surged, its balance sheet has improved, and its valuation multiple has rerated higher, exactly as we had expected.

Even then, we still think that Helios remains very attractive for long-term investors.

At today’s share price, Helios has a market cap of roughly £2.5 billion, or about $3.4 billion. Management is guiding for $215 million to $230 million of RFCF in 2026, which is the closest equivalent to AFFO in their reporting. That puts the company at roughly 15x 2026 RFCF.

But this guidance includes a roughly $20 million working capital outflow. If that normalizes in 2027, then normalized RFCF would already be closer to $235 million to $250 million.

On top of that, management expects its tenancy pipeline to add more than $15 million of annualized RFCF from 2027 onward. This implies potential normalized RFCF of roughly $250 million to $265 million, putting the valuation closer to just 13x forward normalized RFCF.

That is not expensive for a company that could potentially enjoy double-digit annual AFFO per share growth for a long time to come.

The consumption of data is exploding across the African continent. Its mobile phone market remains far behind the developed world, and the continent is also enjoying rapid population and economic growth. Helios is directly benefiting from this as one of the leading owners of telecom infrastructure across Africa and the Middle East.

Therefore, we remain very optimistic about the long run, and we have no intention of selling our position entirely.

You can read our full investment thesis by clicking here.

However, at 16% of our International Portfolio, the concentration risk has become a bit too high, especially for an African REIT.

For this reason, we are only slightly trimming our position, bringing it back down to about 13% of the portfolio.

This sale unlocked about $14,000, most of which we are today directly reinvesting into:

Read more

International Workplace Group (IWG / IWGFF) remains our single largest position, and for good reason.

For those less familiar with the company, IWG is the global leader in flexible office space. It operates nearly 6,000 coworking and serviced office locations across more than 120 countries under brands such as Regus and Spaces. In simple terms, it provides flexible workspace solutions to businesses of all sizes, increasingly through a capital-light partnership model with landlords.

I continue to believe that it is a multibagger in the making because the company is in the middle of a major business transformation that the market still does not fully appreciate. Historically, IWG was viewed as a capex-heavy, cyclical office business.

But that is no longer the right way to think about it. It is increasingly becoming a capital-light, fast-growing, more resilient platform that helps landlords monetize vacant space and helps tenants access flexible office solutions on demand via partnership models.

That transformation is creating a much better business. It requires less capital, carries less lease liability risk, grows faster, and should ultimately deserve a much higher valuation multiple. At the same time, management is using the company’s strong cash flow and balance sheet to aggressively repurchase shares while the stock still trades at a deeply discounted valuation. That combination, improving business quality, rising cash flow, multiple expansion potential, and heavy buybacks, is what makes this such an attractive long-term opportunity.

The latest results only reinforced that thesis.

Read more

Here at High Yield Landlord, we care deeply about our retirees and conservative income investors.

We want to serve you well and help you reach your financial goals as effectively as possible.

That is exactly why we created the Retirement Portfolio.

It sometimes seems that the Core and International Portfolios get more of our attention, which is understandable given their broader opportunity set and often more dynamic developments. But the Retirement Portfolio remains very important to us, and for that reason, I wanted to write an article sharing some thoughts on it from a few different angles.

As a reminder, the Retirement Portfolio aims to maximize safe income by focusing on high-yielding, lower-risk opportunities. It is centered on larger, well-capitalized blue-chip REITs trading below NAV and also selectively includes preferred shares to enhance yield.

The objective of the Retirement Portfolio is to maximize safe long-term income rather than total return performance. Whether income is used for reinvestment or to fund living expenses, we take seriously the desire for a reliable and consistent income stream. Therefore, our focus in this portfolio is on generating high, safe, predictable, and growing dividend income.

Overall, the Retirement Portfolio has accomplished this goal pretty well, but we acknowledge that some of our picks have missed the mark in the past.

We know how frustrating dividend cuts can be, especially for retirees who rely on the income for living expenses, but eliminating all risks in investing is not possible, and often, these dividend reductions are a surprise even to us.

For example, no one predicted that W.P Carey (WPC) would choose to spin off its office properties all at once (rather than selling them slowly over time). This pulled forward a lot of future pain and necessitated a 25% dividend cut that surprised and embittered lots of shareholders, including us.

However, as we’ve explained in the past, we are ultimately supportive of management’s decision to rip the band-aid off quickly instead of slowly. The portfolio and balance sheet improved dramatically, and the dividend reduction ultimately made the dividend stronger by lowering the payout ratio.

That is why we kept WPC as our largest position in the Retirement Portfolio, and we are glad that we did, as it has strongly recovered since then:

Going forward, we are renewing our efforts to provide as much value to our retirees and income investors as possible.

That’s the purpose of this update, in which we will go over our current Retirement Portfolio before briefly discussing our preferred stock holdings, some risks we are monitoring, potential portfolio additions, and the best buys today within the portfolio.

Portfolio Overview

Our Retirement Portfolio is heavily weighted toward large-cap REITs with long track records, skilled management teams, and strong balance sheets.

All common stock holdings in the portfolio boast investment-grade credit ratings.

Roughly 3/4ths of the portfolio is invested in common equity shares, while 1/4th is currently invested in preferred stocks.

To quote our recent Q1 2026 Portfolio Review:

“The blue-chip REITs offer consistent dividend growth and help preserve purchasing power over time, while the preferred shares enhance the portfolio’s yield and reduce volatility. Combined, they provide an optimal mix of income, growth, and downside protection.”

Here’s an overview of the portfolio organized by position weighting, ascending from largest to smallest holding.

Read more

Recently, I published a public article on Seeking Alpha explaining why I think farmland could be a smarter diversifier than gold for many investors.

That article sparked a lot of interest among High Yield Landlord members, and many of you followed up with questions about farmland investing.

That did not surprise me. Farmland has many of the qualities that investors seek in gold. It is a hard asset, limited in supply, and potentially attractive in times of inflation, high deficit spending, and broader market uncertainty. But unlike gold, farmland is also productive. It generates income, and over time, that combination of yield, scarcity, and inflation protection can make it a very compelling asset class.

Because of your interest, I reached out to my connections at FarmTogether, one of the leading farmland crowdfunding investment firms, to set up a Q&A with their CEO, David Gould.

In the interview below, we discuss why farmland is attracting more attention today, where they are currently finding the best opportunities, what separates a great farm investment from an average one, how technology and AI are improving farm productivity, and how farmland compares with gold as a store of value and portfolio diversifier.

In the conclusion, I will also discuss how this all relates to REITs and how to best invest in this asset class.

You can learn more about FarmTogether by clicking here.

Q&A Interview With The CEO of FarmTogether

1) What makes farmland a compelling investment in 2026, in your opinion?

Farmland sits at a rare intersection of income generation and long-term capital preservation.

Productive land is a finite, essential resource — the world needs to eat, and you can’t manufacture more high-quality farmland. In an environment where investors are still navigating inflation uncertainty and equity volatility, farmland offers something genuinely different: stable cash flows from leases, real asset backing, and a return profile that isn’t correlated to the broader market.

The opportunity in the U.S. farmland market is immense — we’re talking about a $3.5 trillion asset class that has historically been accessible only to large institutions and ultra-high-net-worth families. That’s starting to change, and we’re right in the middle of that shift.

2) How is your investment strategy today, and how has it evolved in the past few years?

When FarmTogether started, the focus was primarily on opening up farmland to accredited investors through crowdfunded offerings — making the asset class more accessible. That mission hasn’t changed, but the strategy has matured significantly. We’ve built out five distinct investment vehicles: crowdfunded offerings, sole ownership bespoke offerings, tenancy-in-common structures (which can be 1031 exchange-eligible), separately managed accounts, and our Sustainable Farmland Fund. We’ve also deepened our emphasis on permanent crops — almonds, pistachios, citrus, apples, and now avocados — which are more operationally complex but offer meaningful upside when managed well.

And we’ve been building out institutional-grade capabilities: more rigorous underwriting, dedicated farm management, and a proprietary sourcing engine called Terra that helps us find high-quality off-market opportunities efficiently. The platform today serves individual accredited investors, financial advisors, and family offices — a much broader tent than where we started.

3) Where are you currently finding the best opportunities, geographically and by crop type?

Our primary focus is on high-value permanent crops in key West Coast growing regions — California’s Central Valley and San Joaquin Valley for citrus, almonds, and pistachios; the Pacific Northwest for apples; and coastal California for avocados. These regions combine favorable climates, long production histories, and established agricultural infrastructure.

One area we find particularly compelling right now are selective almond opportunities, where valuations remain depressed coming off a multi-year oversupply cycle. Acreage is contracting, export demand is recovering, and from a mean-reversion standpoint, we believe the entry point today is attractive precisely because sentiment is still cautious. Pistachios tell a different story — the industry just came off a record crop year and is entering a natural off-year cycle, but the long-term fundamentals are strong: growing global demand, constrained competition from Iran and Turkey, and a firmer price outlook as acreage growth slows.

We recently expanded into avocados for the first time with a property in Santa Barbara County, Riviera Avocado Grove, reflecting sustained consumer demand and constrained domestic supply. Geography matters enormously in all of this — water access, soil quality, and operator expertise are non-negotiable, and we won’t venture into a region unless we have the relationships and local knowledge to underwrite it properly.

4) What separates a great farmland investment from an average one in your experience?

A few things. First, the operator. Farming is a skilled business, and partnering with best-in-class operators for each specific crop type is probably the single most important variable. We maintain dedicated relationships with operators we trust, and we don’t compromise on that.

Second, water. In the West especially, water rights and irrigation infrastructure can make or break an investment — it’s something we’ve specifically added dedicated expertise for on our team.

Third, the acquisition price relative to the underlying fundamentals. We evaluate every property against a 120-point checklist covering soil health, water access, capital improvements, input costs, title, and more. It’s disciplined sourcing and disciplined underwriting — not just buying acres and hoping.

A great investment also has multiple return drivers: reliable lease income that provides downside protection, plus land appreciation potential over the hold period.

5) How do you create value beyond simply buying and holding farmland?

Active management is where we differentiate. 100% of our acreage already employs regenerative methods, such as cover cropping and reduced pesticide use, and we deploy precision agriculture tools across all of our farms — satellite imagery, soil sensors, and GPS-guided machinery to identify weak zones and adjust inputs accordingly. We also launched FarmTogether Innovation Labs, which is a formal initiative to pilot and scale promising agricultural technologies across our portfolio. The idea is to evaluate tools that can genuinely improve soil health, water conservation, and farm resilience — not for the sake of just innovation, but because improving the underlying health and productivity of the land is the most durable path to long-term investor returns. We’re also active on the operator management side, supporting property improvements and working closely with our farm management partners on cost structure and yield optimization.

6) Do you see technology, including AI, improving productivity and margins in farming?

Absolutely, and it’s already happening on our farms. We’re currently piloting precision soil analysis technology across several of our Washington apple orchards. AI-driven analytics, advanced irrigation systems, and automation are all areas we’re evaluating through Innovation Labs. The potential is real — better data on soil health means more precise fertilizer application, which reduces input costs and improves yields. Water management technology is particularly important in California and the Pacific Northwest, where water scarcity is a growing structural issue.

Our view is that technology adoption has to pass a fiduciary test: does it actually improve land performance and investor returns, not just sound impressive? But when it does, we move on it. The farms that integrate these tools thoughtfully will have a meaningful cost and productivity advantage over the next decade.

7) What is your outlook for farmland over the next 5 to 10 years? How sensitive are your returns to changes in interest rates and inflation?

The long-term structural case is strong. Global food demand is projected to rise significantly by mid-century, productive land is finite, and institutional capital is still meaningfully underallocated to the asset class. Farmland’s return profile is unusual because it combines steady cash income — through lease agreements and crop-share structures — with the potential for long-term land appreciation driven by factors like productivity improvements and scarcity of high-quality acreage.

On rate sensitivity: farmland is actually one of the more resilient real assets in a higher-rate environment. Unlike commercial real estate, farmland’s income isn’t driven by cap rate expansion — it’s driven by biological necessity. Crops get planted and harvested regardless of the Fed funds rate. That said, higher rates can pressure land values at the margin, since buyer financing costs more. On inflation, farmland is genuinely well-positioned — land values and commodity prices tend to move with inflation over time, making it a real hedge rather than a nominal one. Even in 2024 — a rare down year for the index, and the first negative annual return in the index’s history — income returns remained positive, cushioning the impact of declining land values. That dual-driver structure is what makes farmland resilient across rate and inflation cycles.

8) How would you compare farmland to gold as a store of value and portfolio diversifier?

Both are real assets that hold value over time and offer historically low correlation to equities — but farmland does something gold simply can’t: it generates income. Gold sits in a vault. A well-managed farm produces crops year after year and pays distributions to investors.

Farmland also has a productive use case that anchors its intrinsic value — people need to eat, and that demand is not going away. Gold’s value is more sentiment-driven. For investors looking to diversify and preserve capital, farmland offers what gold offers, plus an income stream and the possibility of appreciation driven by real economic activity. The tradeoff is liquidity — farmland is typically less liquid than gold, which is why we’ve built multiple product structures to give investors options that fit their liquidity needs and investment horizons.

9) How is your investment structure designed to align your interests with investors?

Our fee structure ties our compensation to performance rather than just assets under management. Our Sustainable Farmland Fund, for example, is structured as an open-ended evergreen fund with a focus on generating consistent income — it has outperformed the NCREIF Farmland Index for three consecutive years and generated cash yields in line with its 4–6% target. We also offer 1031 exchange-eligible structures for investors with specific tax needs — that kind of flexibility comes from genuinely trying to solve for what investors need, not just what’s convenient for us to offer.

Conclusion

My main takeaway from this Q&A is that farmland remains a highly attractive real asset, but successful investing in it requires far more than simply buying land and hoping for appreciation.

The interview highlights several key points. Farmland combines real asset protection, income generation, and long-term appreciation potential. The best opportunities are highly selective, with geography, crop type, water access, and operator quality driving outcomes. Active management also matters a lot, as better underwriting, technology, and strong operating partners can materially improve returns.

The discussion also reinforces why farmland can be an interesting diversifier. Like gold, it can help preserve value over time, but unlike gold, it is a productive asset that generates cash flow.

That said, accessing farmland is not straightforward.

Publicly listed options are very limited, with Farmland Partners (FPI) and Gladstone Land (LAND) being the main choices. In most cases, I strongly prefer public REITs over private investments. They offer better liquidity, transparency, and often better alignment.

However, farmland is a rare exception.

First, both of these REITs are highly leveraged, which makes them significantly riskier than the underlying asset class would suggest. Second, they have had management issues historically, particularly Gladstone Land, which is externally managed. Third, the public farmland REIT market remains immature and tends to trade in line with broader REITs and equities, meaning that you do not fully capture the diversification benefits that farmland should provide.

Because of this, I think it can make sense to look at private options in this specific case, including platforms like FarmTogether.

If you are looking for a publicly listed option, my favorite otpion is the preferred equity of Gladstone Land in our Retirement Portfolio. It offers a ~7.3% yield and trades at roughly a 20% discount to par, providing margin of safety. In my view, this is the best publicly listed way to gain exposure to farmland today.

But to build a more complete allocation, I would seriously consider complementing this with private investments.

Overall, this was a useful conversation, and it offers valuable insight into how one of the leading firms in the space is approaching the opportunity set today.

You can create an account and learn more about FarmTogether by clicking here.

Finally, please note that we have exceptionally posted this article without a paywall. If you found it valuable, consider joining High Yield Landlord for a 2-week free trial.

We expect to share a Trade Alert with our paid members tomorrow, and by starting your free trial today, you will also gain access to it. You will also get immediate access to my entire REIT portfolio, our exclusive REIT CEO interviews, and much more. We are the largest and highest-rated REIT investment newsletter online, with over 2,000 paid members and more than 500 five-star reviews.

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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of all companies held in the CORE PORTFOLIO, RETIREMENT PORTFOLIO, and INTERNATIONAL PORTFOLIO either through stock ownership, options, or other derivatives. We also own a position in FarmTogether. High Yield Landlord® (’HYL’) is managed by Leonberg Research, a subsidiary of Leonberg Capital. All rights are reserved. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. The newsletter is impersonal and subscribers/readers should not make any investment decision without conducting their own due diligence, and consulting their financial advisor about their specific situation. The information is obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. The opinions expressed are those of the publisher and are subject to change without notice. We are a team of five analysts, each contributing distinct perspectives. Nonetheless, Jussi Askola, the leader of the service, is responsible for making the final investment decisions and overseeing the portfolio. We do not always agree with each other, and an investment by Jussi should not be taken as an endorsement by other authors. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Our portfolio performance data is provided by Interactive Brokers and believed to be accurate but its accuracy has not been audited and cannot be guaranteed. Our portfolio may not be perfectly comparable to the relevant index. It is more concentrated and may at times use margin and/or invest in companies that are not typically included in REIT indexes. Finally, High Yield Landlord is not a licensed securities dealer, broker, US investment adviser, or investment bank. We simply share research on the REIT sector.