You see, retailers, supermarkets, gas stations and fast-food joints don't typically own the real estate they occupy. My local Bass Pro anchors a retail development in Little Rock. The massive 102,000 square foot property is located along I-30 on a heavily-traveled, space-constrained interchange. This prime piece of real estate was appraised at $12.2 million in 2013.
Less than a decade later, it sold for $22 million.
Of course, that handsome $10 million gain is in addition to regular rent checks made payable to the landlord each month.
Now, commercial properties can rack up some hefty expenses. Think you pay a lot for yard care? Imagine the outlays for a 500,000-square-foot shopping center. There's landscaping and irrigation work to be done. Parking lots must occasionally be re-paved and freshly painted. Exterior lights must be changed.
But owners usually pass common area maintenance (CAM) and upkeep costs along to their renters. In fact, these same tenants are also obligated to pay their share of the property's insurance premiums. And the yearly real estate taxes.
What financial responsibilities does that leave for the landlord? Well, not many, except maybe the mortgage note. The lessee is on the hook for just about everything else. This arrangement — referred to as a "triple-net lease" in industry parlance — is quite common. And it can shield investors from some of the peskier and uncontrollable expenses that tend to grow larger over time.
Just ask Store Capital, a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) that owns 3,000 properties nationwide. They are leased to restaurants, dental clinics and retailers… including Bass Pro. Warren Buffett invested nearly $400 million in the stock and then doubled down with another huge block in 2020.
I recommended the stock to my High-Yield Investing readers in April 2022, just five months before a private equity consortium came knocking with a generous $15 billion takeover bid.
Fortunately, there are other viable candidates in this niche with similar portfolios, such as NNN (NYSE: NNN). The clever name says it all. The commercial property owner employs the triple net arrangement across its entire 37-million square foot portfolio.
Deposit rent checks. Acquire new properties. Collect more rent checks. Disburse a growing income stream to stockholders.
Rinse and repeat.
It has worked out well for shareholders. The stock has posted a healthy 12.4% average annual return over the past quarter-century – while raising dividends for 35 consecutive years.
If you want to cast a line in these waters, aim for Realty Income (NYSE: O), whose diverse tenant base includes Home Depot, Dollar General, 7-Eleven and Starbucks. The portfolio spans 15,000+ properties that generate north of $5 billion in annual base rental income.
About 90% of that comes from tenants that are either service-oriented or non-discretionary – a clever way of saying they don't compete with Amazon. Management deployed another $1.4 billion last quarter alone, scooping up new properties whose rent checks provide a weighted average cash yield of 7.5%.
With an occupancy rate that rarely dips below 98%, Realty Income has made 659 consecutive monthly dividends – increasing distributions for the past 110 quarters in a row.
Pressing pause on the benefit fear train
The Trump administration has been shaking things up inside the D.C. beltway… and it's threatening to impact popular entitlement programs like Social Security.
Whether that turns out to be true, or just another bit of "fake news," you owe it to yourself to check out a little-known loophole my colleague Jim Pearce has discovered.
It allowed a small handful of regular Americans to collect over $109 million last year. You can join them by getting the full story here.
