I recently came across a Thomson Reuters article that reported Singapore REITs have hit a five-year high in distribution yield. Their analysis of 14 REITs showed the median dividend yield was 6.7% at end-January — the highest since at least April 2011. According to Thomson Reuters:

“The yield trend offers a timely reminder of the lingering allure of investments tied to brick-and-mortar such as REITs, which typically provide stable income streams, at a time when investors are on a knife-edge amid global market turmoil and fears about the health of banks and the broader economy.”

I decided to a quick comparison of annual yields across a handful of asset classes and instead of using the median yield of the 14 REITs used in the Thomson Reuters analysis, I went with the average yield of all 35 REITs in Singapore. Here are the yields (as at 23 Feb 2016): ......