A $3,500 Investment in This REIT a Decade Ago Has Already Produced More Than $2,700 in Passive Income

Realty Income (NYSE: O) has done a phenomenal job generating passive income for its investors over the years. The real estate investment trust (REIT) has paid out over $9.3 billion in dividends throughout its history, steadily increasing the per-share payment. These dividends have really added up for investors who have held shares of the REIT over the long term.

Realty Income has been paying dividends for more than 50 years, including 27 as a publicly traded company. The REIT has increased its dividend payment 115 times since coming public in 1994, with the last 98 coming in consecutive quarters. Overall, it has given investors a raise every year since going public, putting it in the elite class of Dividend Aristocrats. 

To put this dividend growth into perspective, we'll consider a hypothetical investment of 100 shares made a decade ago, which would have cost about $3,500. Given Realty Income's stock price and dividend payment at the time, that initial investment would have had a dividend yield of around 5%. That implies investors would have generated about $175 of dividend income in that first year.

Continue reading

Source Fool.com