stc1

"Best in Class" Vornado Will Pay Dividend in Stock

First of all, this concept that Vornado is a "best in class" REIT is ridiculous. Vornado is basically a themeless real estate and real estate-related hedge fund run by two financial engineers, Fascitelli and Roth. Neither has much property development or management experience. They buy low and (hope to) sell high while collecting rents in the interim. They aren't great at redevelopment or repositioning; they're very good at doing deals. Their core FFO growth, if you strip out all the gains and special items (which should never have been lumped in in the first place), is mediocre. They're going to be severely tested during this downturn, primarily because no one in senior management has actually managed a real estate portfolio during a recession. I'm guessing the Vornado cult will come to the same conclusion relatively soon.

Long EPR, DLR, ARE, O common and preferreds hedged with SRS.

Top 15 Dividend Paying REITs

Also, I'm fairly certain your calc's for EPR, ARE, AMB and SLG are wrong, as their div's haven't grown by those percentages. All four came public in 1997, so I'm guessing you used their partial div's for the year for your base to calc div growth. AIV is also wrong; I don't know where your numbers are coming from. But hey, I tentatively think that the remaining five might be right! Just follow this simple rule: GGP should always come out #1 in historical dividend growth among REITs. If you get another result, your looking at the wrong info.

Long ARE, EPR, GGP & O

Top 15 Dividend Paying REITs

This article needs a bit more homework. GTY and RYN weren't REITs for the entirety of your timeframe, so their dividend growth is skewed upward by their REIT conversion. PEI's div growth doesn't reflect the fact that the company foundered through most of the 90's and had to cut its dividend and restructure through a backdoor UPREIT (in 1997) before starting to grow again. PSA's div growth is skewed by some of its formation transactions.