For 60 years, investors have flocked to the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting. In 2025, nearly 20,000 shareholders made the pilgrimage to Omaha, Nebraska, hoping to glean wisdom and insights from legendary investor Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha. One highlight of the meetings is the question-and-answer period. In addition to topics that included company performance, leadership succession planning, and the economic outlook, Buffett was asked about his thoughts on real estate investment at this year’s meeting.
When asked why he was still buying stocks instead of property, Buffet indicated that he had done some property deals in the past, but he believed that real estate was much harder than stocks. He viewed the negotiations, multiple party involvement, and time to (and certainty of) closing a real estate deal as challenges, especially since one can do hundreds of millions of dollars of securities transactions in a day with anonymity, efficiency, and certainty.
For investors that share Buffett’s perspective on real estate, REITs are a good solution. As 65 years of growth in the industry have made clear, REITs are real estate. REITs offer attractive risk-adjusted returns, as well as opportunities for income generation, diversification, and potential inflation protection, but they can provide these benefits with quick, efficient, and certain executions.
Today, Nareit estimates that 170 million Americans, or approximately 50% of the U.S. population, live in households that are invested in REITs. In addition, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission form 13F filings indicate that Berkshire Hathaway made a sizable REIT investment in the second quarter of 2025. It purchased more than 1.1 million shares, worth approximately $142 million, of Lamar Advertising Co. (Nasdaq: LAMR), a specialized REIT focused on U.S. outdoor advertising.
The exhibit above makes the case for REIT investment by displaying its many advantages. REITs possess desirable structural and market characteristics like global access to innovative property sectors, good corporate governance, and ample liquidity. The financial and performance benefits of REITs include historical total return outperformance relative to private real estate, low investment management fee structures, efficient access to public and private sources of capital, and disciplined balance sheets. REITs also offer competitive and operational advantages through their property sector specialization, scale, resilient portfolios, and operational excellence.
For those investors seeking efficient and timely access to high-quality real estate portfolios with best-in-class operators, REITs may prove to be an excellent choice. REITs offer an expansive menu of investment choices with broad investor appeal. At the end of 2024, a total of 1,021 listed REITs with a combined equity market capitalization of more than $2 trillion were in operation around the world. Investors can easily and quickly diversify the property sector and geographic footprints of their real estate portfolios using listed real estate.