If you’re a seasoned dividend investor, you’re probably well familiar with what REITs are. Real Estate Investment Trusts are great investments for people seeking income from real estate properties. Because REITs are required to pay out 90% of their earnings back to shareholders in the form of dividends, they’re very lucrative for those looking to live off of passive income.

Probably most of us are familiar with such REITs as Realty Income, Federal Realty Trust, and W.P. Carey, which are all publicly traded on stock exchanges. Much like your typical stock, REITs can trade in the stock market which makes them super convenient. In fact there’s probably no easier way to invest in real estate than a publicly traded REIT. Not to mention there’s lots of websites like Yahoo Finance and Seeking Alpha that provide a lot of good information on them you can use to analyze each REIT.

While this is the most common way to invest in REITs, something that fewer people might be aware of is that there are actually different types of REITs. First you’ve got public REITs, which are what Realty Income and W P Carey are. But then you’ve also got private as well non-listed REITs, which aren’t traded in the stock market.