Real Estate Investment Trusts for Security and Peace Mind in Turbulent Economic Times

Real Estate Investment Trusts to Hedge the Stock and Bond Markets

Have you taken a look at your investment portfolio lately? If you have, and it's filled with the normal stock and bond investments, you may have noticed that there has been a lot of damage to those investments in the past year or so. With the credit crunch and the market crash, most investments are half, or less, of what they should be.

This is when you should consider what you should be doing to hedge those other investments. This is where REITs come in.

REITs are Real Estate Investment Trusts. These are funds where you fund a real estate management company. There are a variety of REITs out there. Some offer a way to back real estate developers who are taking on new ventures in construction. Others are meant to fund management of residential real estate such as apartment complexes, condominiums or even neighborhoods. Still others use the funds put into the REIT to operate commercial real estate interests.

I think Louis J. Glickman said it best when he said, "The best investment on earth is earth.” Real estate is always a wise investment. No matter what happens the land will always be there. Sure it may waiver in value from time to time, but in the long run, it will always be around, unlike businesses that can close their doors and take your investments down with them.

With this said, adding a REIT or two to your portfolio it would offer you a little more diversity and security in your investments.

You never know what the stock market will do. Just in the past few decades we have seen a number of sweeping changes in the market that completely broke some investors. Think of how many people you know who went bust during the Doc.com era.

Often the problem for them was they were too focused on the flavor of the month. They were putting everything they had into the new Dot.coms hoping to continue to ride the boom and make great profits. While they did see some great profits, those did not last forever. For those who kept putting everything they had into the doc.com market, they felt the agony of defeat in a major way when the market fell, many losing everything they had.

While there is nothing wrong with trying to jump in on an up and coming thing and make a great profit, it comes down to the old 'all your eggs in one basket' cliché. You don't want to have everything hedging on one investment. Instead have a diverse portfolio so if there is a drop in one area, you have other investments hedged against it.

In this case, even when there is a drop in the stock market and mutual funds, real estate usually will hold pretty strong through the down times, keeping you from feeling that all of your investments have been swept away.

When you're ready to take a step towards diversity, make sure to do it right. Going to a website like ReitBuyer.com will help you do just that. They will not only give you the research and information you need to buy wisely, but they are also real estate brokers for these investments and can help you seal the deal.