Dani Lynn Robison explains why real estate outperformed stocks in 2020. One in four publicly traded companies cut dividends during the crash, but apartment building owners kept collecting rent above 94%. Stock payouts are discretionary; rent is a contractual obligation.
In 2020, 1 in 4 companies on the stock market cut their investor payouts. Here's what real estate did instead. When the market dropped in 2020, a lot of companies stopped paying their investors. No warning, no timeline, just, "We're not paying this quarter." If you were counting on that money to live on, that was a real problem. Real estate works differently. When you own a piece of an apartment building, tenants pay rent every month. That doesn't stop because the stock market had a bad week. In 2020, apartment rent collections stayed above 94%. Here's the simple difference: stock payouts are a choice a company makes. Rent is a contract a tenant signs. One can disappear overnight, and the other has a lease behind it. That matters a lot when it's your income on the line.
Physicians and High Earners — What Real Estate Can and Can't Do for Your Taxes
