I read this in an effort to broaden and improve my investing skills. REITs, or Real Estate Investment Trusts, are like mutual funds of real-estate assets (typically this means either managed properties or mortgage notes), and Investing in REITs explains just about everything one might want to know about the subject. This includes a formal definition of REITs, coverage of the different types of REITs, and how to decide whether a particular REIT is a good investment and what its fair value should be. It’s hard to say anything bad about the quality of the content, but I did discover that I didn’t really need to read an entire book about REITs to understand their pros and cons; a short blog post or 5-page article would have served me just as well.

Not for the average retail investor; it gives great holistic advice on what REITs are and the history behind them however this is not the most friendly read and most nights I was asleep after reading three pages. Great information overall though

Reads a little like an academic textbook but otherwise is a good introduction to REITs. Offers a global perspective on the topic with discussions of listings in countries such as Hong Kong and Singapore.

A great intro to the world of REITS. I am halfway done and have learned quite a bit. If you are interested, it would be worth your time to pickup.

I picked up this book because there are not very many books about this subject and I had the impression this must be a well-written book for the fact it is the 4th edition of the title. Unfortunately, I found this book very wordy, repetitive, boring, and harder to decipher than some of the legal documents and texts I had read in the past. The author warns at the beginning that the book is written for professional people; however, the concepts and the subject matters explained the book are pretty basic. Like a successful real estate investor once told me: investing in real estate is not rocket science but it involves a lot of details. It really takes some hard work to take basic concepts and making them sound so complex and difficult to understand. (For example: one sentence in the book is 12 lines long.) Two and a half stars.

This was a good in-depth book on REITs. It analyzed the history, legality, and details of what REITs are while also giving a few considerations for their future. This was definitely a good starting place for building a base of understanding with REITs.

Warning to future readers: this book is more like a textbook or meta-analysis.

Pretty useful overview on REIT investing, but any tax related information is very US centric.

a decent book on REIT.

Overall a disappointing read. This book may be of interest if you are seeking in building your own portfolio of individual REIT stocks, rather than an ETF/mutual fund, but it does not touch on private REITs from an investor perspective (e.g. syndications). The most useful chapters of the book are the discussion of different REIT property types, regulations, and accounting practices. But an inordinate amount of time is spent dissecting past performance, which is not indicative of future returns, and so is not all that useful. Throughout the book, the author attempts to make the case that REITs are a distinct asset class, rather than just a specific sector of stocks. But they also undercut this point entirely in Chapter 13:

A substantial part of the appeal of REIT stocks is that many investors regard them as a separate asset class, like bonds or international stocks, and the inclusion of such a separate asset class within a broadly diversified investment portfolio has many advantages, particularly in view of their modest correlations, in most periods, with other asset classes. If REIT shares become viewed simply as equities, like tech stocks or health care stocks, will this advantage be lost?

Perhaps–but not necessarily. It should not matter what label is placed on a group of stocks if owning them as part of a diversified portfolio continues to provide the investor with significant advantages.

If that is the case, then why not make the same argument for a dedicated allocation to utility stocks, which could be described similarly. The book utterly fails to make a convincing argument as to why public REITs should be held in greater proportion to their weight in total market stock indexes.

Good Insights on US based REIT market performance in past 25 years.

This was exactly what I was looking for!
Great book for new REITs investors, highly recommended. The book provides valuable knowledges via an approachable language and explanation. Some times, some historical stories are a bit long, but if you have the time they prove to provide solid in understanding for the current state of REITs. For some deep concepts, I suggest that you should re read the Definition online to fully understand before continue with the book contents.

Good intro book into REIT investing. The first 10-11 chapters have a lot of great material explaining the differences between REIT investing and other forms of investing, and how that information should help guide decision making in this area.

It's also interesting to read knowing that it was written in 2012, and some things have changed significantly in the real estate world since then (especially after 2020-21).