What if you bought Realty Income in 1995?
Real estate · REIT. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play3.0× · S&P 500 same money: $14,783
$1,000 in Realty Income at the start of 1995 would be worth about $3,000 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Realty Income owns thousands of freestanding commercial properties, such as pharmacies, convenience stores, dollar stores and gyms, leased to tenants under long-term net leases where the tenant pays taxes, insurance and maintenance. It listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1994 and trademarked the nickname The Monthly Dividend Company, paying dividends every month and raising them more than a hundred times. The share price itself moved slowly, roughly flat through the 1990s and the financial crisis.
As interest rates fell in the 2010s, income-hungry investors bid up dependable dividend payers, and the shares climbed steadily; Realty Income grew through acquisitions, including VEREIT in 2021 and Spirit Realty in 2024, and expanded into the UK and Europe. The flip side of being a bond-like stock appeared when interest rates rose sharply in 2022-2023: higher yields on safe bonds made its dividend less special and raised its borrowing costs, and the share price fell back below its 2020 level. Price alone tells only half the story here, since the steadily rising dividends made up much of the total return.
The lesson: For income investments a price-only chart understates the result; much of the return arrives as dividends, and rising interest rates compete directly with them.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | $20.00 | $3,000 | $14,783 | 3.0× |
| 2000 | $20.00 | $3,000 | $4,626 | 3.0× |
| 2003 | $34.00 | $1,765 | $7,727 | 1.8× |
| 2005 | $25.00 | $2,400 | $5,763 | 2.4× |
| 2007 | $28.00 | $2,143 | $4,789 | 2.1× |
| 2008 | $27.00 | $2,222 | $4,626 | 2.2× |
| 2010 | $26.00 | $2,308 | $6,071 | 2.3× |
| 2012 | $35.00 | $1,714 | $5,312 | 1.7× |
| 2015 | $48.00 | $1,250 | $3,301 | 1.2× |
| 2018 | $56.00 | $1,071 | $2,519 | 1.1× |
| 2020 | $74.00 | $811 | $2,092 | 0.8× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 1995, turning $1,000 into $3,000. The S&P 500 from that same year: $14,783.
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. Realty Income is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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