Tags
Apollo Commercial, Colony Financial, Goldman Sachs, Kinder Morgan Energy, Leverage, PennyMac, REIT, Starwood Property
I’m no big fan of US REITs (or MLPs). I can’t count the number of excitable headlines/articles I’ve read about REIT/MLP yields…but still wonder if there’s a decent investment amongst the entire bunch?
You’re certainly not going to find one in the non-traded REIT sector. You may have never heard of these, but you can bet they know all about them down at the senior centre. What’s the sales pitch for this garbage? Hey, we’ll take 10% up-front in commissions, we’ll charge you again to redeem (if we even let you redeem), you’ll have no idea what your shares are really worth…but, gee heck, look at the yield!! Oh, and we’ll never point out that much of your yield is simply a return of capital. Perfect for the old dears… Read this v entertaining REIT forum. But this isn’t just a US phenomenon, there’s plenty of similar horror stories in Europe too.