Look at average of all REITs, VNQ. It'll return about 3% dividends plus appreciation (roughly inflation over the long term ~ the last 10 years have been a bit

Look at average of all REITs, VNQ. It'll return about 3% dividends plus appreciation (roughly inflation over the long term ~ the last 10 years have been a bit of an anomoly). After tax 3% ends up as 2%. And these are the Pros they know what they're doing. If your using leverage then you're playing a very risky game and just as the upsides are very high, the downsides are equally higher if not more. Properties that rent 7%+ are very high risk areas where you could easily loose much of the principle. And, you need to look at the percentage return on the total investment after all expenses. After all that, you need to multiply it by .7 because it's considered income. There are people who this for a living, who know far more about it than anyone else. They run REITS. I mean, just look at the total returns for REITs. yes, there's some that have dividends as high as 5% up to even 10%, I even have some of them in retirement portfolio but I expect they'll loose some of their principle as any REIT with such a high dividend probably would. Just read any financial review and you'll see that anything with a dividend above 10% is highly suspicious or Risky.