A REIT owns buildings and passes the rent through to unit holders. It is how you own a share of a warehouse or a student block without buying one.

Two kinds exist here. An I-REIT (income) holds finished, let property and distributes the rent. A D-REIT (development) builds, and pays out when projects complete — longer, riskier, and generally restricted to professional investors.

A REIT is required to distribute most of its income, so the yield is the point of it in a way that is not true of an ordinary share.

The listed ones trade on the NSE exactly like a share: a CDS account, a stockbroker, an order. There is no separate process and no minimum beyond the price of a unit.

A D-REIT, and some restricted I-REITs, are sold only to professional investors and are not on the open board.

One thing to check before buying: REIT units can trade thinly. A price on the screen is not a promise that somebody will take your units at it on the day you want out.

Two parts, and they must be read together. The distribution is the rent, paid out periodically; the price is what the market will pay for the units. A REIT can distribute well and still lose you money if the unit price falls further, which has happened on this market.

Ipahco works the distribution yield out from the payouts of the last twelve months against today's price, and shows it before tax — what is withheld from a REIT distribution depends on who is holding it, and a guessed rate would be worse than none.

It is kept out of the main rate table deliberately. A REIT's return is not a rate, and ranking it against a money market fund as though it were would be comparing a certainty with a hope.