For decades, when investment advisors talked about “diversifying your portfolio to include real estate,” they typically meant adding REITs to your stock portfolio.

Don’t get me wrong, real estate investment trusts (REITs) have their advantages. They’re extremely liquid and easy to buy or sell with the click of a button in your existing brokerage account. And you can invest for the cost of a single share, which could mean investing $15 instead of $50,000. 

But do publicly-traded REITs offer true diversification from the stock market at large? Perhaps not as much as you’d like to think.

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