The Joke Shack of the Housing Sector – by Chris Mayer

It’s not often you hear one executive call another business “a joke.” But it happened on a second-quarter earnings call this July.

The target of this criticism is the new crop of publicly traded single-family rental REITs. (REITs, or real estate investment trusts, are companies that own and manage real estate.) Before December of last year, there was no such thing. Now there are three, with more on the way.

Do these vehicles deserve a spot in your portfolio? I’m going to make the case that they do not.