With almost all asset classes and sectors coming down in value, it is getting harder to find anything that is going up.
One place to look is in a few subsets of REITs. As you might expect, REITs that specialize in healthcare, storage, and apartment buildings have either held their own or have even gone up YTD.
In hindsight, this makes sense. Hospitals tend not to go out of business or move across town, so health care real estate is pretty stable. The high number of foreclosures are causing people to put their stuff in storage and move into apartments.
An ETF that specializes in multifamily residential is the FTSE NAREIT Residential Index Fund (REZ). The largest holding is Sam Zell’s Equity Residential which owns 579 properties and 152,821 units across the U.S.
For a complete listing of REIT ETFs, see the ETF Directory.