Reuben Gregg Brewer, The Motley Fool

Fri, Jun 27, 2025, 11:05 PM6 min read

• Realty Income is the largest net lease REIT and offers an attractive 5.6% yield.

• Brookfield Asset Management is planning to grow its dividend at 15% a year through the end of the decade.

• Target's retail business is struggling today, but the Dividend King has an attractive 4.6% yield and turnaround plans.

• 10 stocks we like better than Realty Income ›

The average time a Wall Street investor holds a stock has shortened dramatically over the decades. At this point, buying and holding a stock for 10 years is a virtual eternity. But there's a benefit to being a small investor because you can hold for that long and you don't have to worry about anyone breathing down your neck about the performance of the stocks you own.

You can buy boring but reliable high-yield stocks like Realty Income (NYSE: O). Or dividend growth stocks with an income payoff that builds over time, such as Brookfield Asset Management (NYSE: BAM). Or even down-on-their-luck Dividend Kings like Target (NYSE: TGT) that are working on business turnarounds that will play out over years and not days. All three of these high yielders are worth close attention today.

Realty Income is the largest net lease real estate investment trust (REIT). It owns single-tenant properties for which the tenants are responsible for most property-level operating costs. It owns over 15,600 properties, so it has an extremely large portfolio that spans across retail and industrial assets across North America and Europe. This is good and bad at the same time. To get the bad out of the way right up front, Realty Income is a tortoise of a business because it takes so much investment activity to move the needle on the top and bottom lines.

On the good side, having such a large portfolio gives the REIT attractive access to capital markets, the size to take on deals that its smaller peers couldn't handle, and the ability to act as an industry consolidator. While slow and steady is the pace here, history suggests that slow and steady can be very rewarding for conservative income investors. That's particularly true when you consider the 5.6% dividend yield, which is backed by an investment-grade rated balance sheet and a dividend that has been increased annually for three decades. And the dividend is paid monthly, too, so Realty Income is kind of like a paycheck replacement.

If you are a conservative dividend investor, this monster-sized net lease REIT should be on your short list today, with a plan to hold it for at least the next 10 years, if not longer.