282 companies scored with the REIT Specialized template — moat analysis optimized for real estate investment trusts.
Updated 8 days ago
A REIT is a portfolio of buildings financed with debt and required to distribute most of its taxable income. Reported earnings are dominated by depreciation on assets that often appreciate, so net income says very little; the real question is how much cash the properties distribute, and how securely. The REIT template scores what determines that: rent pricing, distributable cash, cost of capital, and the discipline behind growth.
For a REIT, pricing power is the ability to raise rents at renewal and still keep the space occupied. It comes from location and irreplaceability rather than brand — a tenant who cannot find an equivalent site nearby has little negotiating room. It appears in the financials as a property-level operating margin that is both high and stable across leasing cycles.
AFFO — adjusted funds from operations — is the cash a REIT can actually distribute after the recurring capital spending buildings need in order to stay leasable. Net income is not a useful guide here: depreciation understates earnings while ignoring maintenance capital overstates them. Strong, well-covered AFFO is what makes a distribution durable rather than a return of capital.
Real estate is bought with borrowed money, so a REIT's cost of capital is its competitive advantage. A landlord who borrows more cheaply can pay more for the same building and still clear its return hurdle. Moderate leverage, comfortable interest cover and a long, staggered maturity profile decide whether a refinancing window is an opportunity or an emergency.
REITs grow by issuing shares and debt to buy more property, which creates value only when the yield on the asset exceeds the cost of the capital raised. Undisciplined growth lifts reported revenue while diluting cash flow per share. This defense looks for growth that is steady and self-funding rather than growth bought at any price.
Running property — leasing, maintenance, taxes, management — is the part of the business a REIT genuinely controls. Efficient operators convert a higher share of rent into net operating income and cash, an advantage that compounds across a portfolio of hundreds of assets and shows as margins consistently above landlords holding similar property.
Portfolio quality is really a question about what happens when a tenant fails. A REIT concentrated in one tenant, submarket or property type risks a single event emptying a large share of its space; a diversified portfolio of high-quality assets absorbs the same event. It shows through as revenue and margins that hold steady where a concentrated landlord's would step down.
Millrose Properties, Inc. (MRP), CareTrust REIT, Inc. (CTRE), INVESCO MORTGAGE CAPITAL INC 7. (IVR-PC) currently hold the widest moats of the 282 companies in the group, led by Millrose Properties, Inc. at 93 out of 100. The full ranking is on this page, and each company links through to the six defenses behind its score.
A REIT is a portfolio of buildings financed with debt and required to distribute most of its taxable income. Reported earnings are dominated by depreciation on assets that often appreciate, so net income says very little; the real question is how much cash the properties distribute, and how securely. The REIT template scores what determines that: rent pricing, distributable cash, cost of capital, and the discipline behind growth.
It scores 6 defenses: Rent Pricing Power, AFFO Strength, Balance Sheet & Cost of Capital, Capital Recycling & Growth, Operational Efficiency, Portfolio Quality & Diversification. Each is measured independently and then weighted, so a company can be strong on one and weak on another. The weights differ from other templates because the defenses that decide who wins in Real Estate Investment Trusts are not the ones that decide it elsewhere.
Across the 282 companies in this group the median moat score is 51, with the middle half falling between 34 and 63. A score above the upper quartile puts a company in the strongest quarter of its industry. Because scores are percentile-based, roughly half of any industry sits below its own median by construction.