Investments Before Your Eyes

Just about any real estate investment can be researched and transacted over the Internet these days

By Jerry DeMuth

The Internet is creeping into every aspect of business -- including real estate. Investors can make real estate-related investments over the Internet. But, more importantly, they can research those investment opportunities. The Internet is making it easier to find, understand and select real estate-related investments in mortgage-backed securities, real estate investment trusts, bonds, stocks and mutual funds.

"Almost every real estate business is getting oriented to the Internet," says Dale Anne Reiss, national industry leader at E&Y Kenneth Leventhal Real Estate Group in New York. "It's hard to find a real estate company that isn't Web-enabled. You can invest online now and the companies themselves are very active online. You can go into a site for a REIT and see its communities. There's a lot of activity in the real estate dot-com space these days."

Leveraging the Web: "You should leverage the Internet more fully because the information is not easily obtainable," says James Azzarello, a financial planning consultant who heads Copia Financial Solutions Inc. in Palatine, Illinois. "All the stock research you can obtain for any equity, you can get for most REITs."

"The goal is to find the quality sites that have the best information. Many sites repeat the same information in various forms," says Bill Miller, vice president of Appraisal Research Counselors Ltd. in Chicago. "Some of it is good information; others repeat the same facts but mislead you to the conclusion."

You can go to the sites for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which purchase and securitize residential mortgages, to learn about their stock offerings, bonds and notes, and their mortgage-backed securities.

And if you are considering investing in a REIT that specializes in certain categories or types of real estate, you can check out the health of those categories, whether it is office buildings or golf courses. And for REITs with regional focuses, you can check out the health of any region.

For research there are sites that include the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and such business wires as Reuters and Bloomberg; sites operated by real estate trade associations, such as NAREIT.com, NAREIM.com and NCREIF.com, some of which have links to related sites; sites operated by investment houses and real estate research and accounting firms such as EY Kenneth Leventhal Real Estate Group (at ey.com), CB Richard Ellis and RealtyIQ.com as well as sites for cities, chambers of commerce and newspapers in specific regions. Business-oriented search engines, such as northernlights.com, can also be helpful, Miller says.

"The Internet has made gathering knowledge about investments generally, and REITs specifically, much, much easier," says a spokesperson for NAREIT. "You can even scan through recent news stories to get a sense of what the perception is of a company and what analysts are saying about a company."

"Information is available more and more online and you can pull up information on all these things," says David Kruth, vice president of Alliance Capital Management in New York.

"But it's time-consuming and you may have to pay for some of it. For some investors, it may be better to buy a diversified [real estate or REIT] fund."