Mutual Funds
Investment companies investing in investment instruments including real estate. Mutual funds are popular to investors and represent equity in a professionally managed portfolio of securities. Major benefits of investing in real estate mutual funds are:
- Small minimum investment. An investor with limited funds can accomplish diversification by owning many securities in the portfolio.
- Diversification. Each fund share provides an investor an interest in many real estate companies.
- Automatic reinvestment. Most funds permit reinvestment of dividends and capital gains. Funds usually do not assess a sales fee on automatic reinvestments.
- Automatic withdrawals. Many funds permit shareholders to withdraw funds on a periodic basis.
- Liquidity. An investor may redeem the shares owned.
- Switching. An investor may change in his investments as his objectives change.
Mutual funds are of different types, according to structure, the fees charged, means of trading funds, and investment objectives. In open-end funds, investors buy from and sell their shares back to the fund itself. An example is Fidelity Real Estate. On the other hand, closed-end funds have a fixed number of shares outstanding, which trade among individuals in secondary markets like common stocks. All open and closed-end funds have management fees. A major point of closed-end funds is the size of discount or premium, which is the difference between their market prices and their net asset values (NAVs). Some funds sell at discount, which may make them more attractive. Funds charging sales fees are referred to as load funds. Load funds usually do not do better than no-load funds. Some analysts feel investors should buy only no-load or low-load funds. The prospectus of a real estate fund includes information as the fund's investment objectives, way of selecting securities, management and sales fees, and other costs.
Popular Real Estate Terms
(1) Temporary and symbolic payment showing good faith and obligating two or more individuals until a final transaction takes place. The binder is typically returned if the final agreement ...
Insurance or maintenance policy taken out by a buyer of real or personal property. ...
Large heavy piece of wood or other material generally running horizontally through a building providing support for other parts of the structure. The stringer usually runs in the direction ...
Interest rate on a mortgage that moves up or down based on some variable such as an index of lender's cost of funds, inflation rate, or prime rate. ...
Claim by a real estate broker that his or her actions were the principal cause of the completion of a property sale between two parties. A successful procuring cause claim would entitle a ...
provision in a written agreement allowing the prospective purchaser the right to cancel the contract if occupancy requirements are not satisfied as of a specific date. ...
Period of time interest rates are guaranteed by lock-in-clause. The guarantee period of time is longer during stable economic periods with low rates of inflation. ...
Amount paid back or credit given because of an overcollection or the return of property sold. Also called refund. Unearned interest refunded to a borrower if the loan is paid off before ...
Unimproved property. It has no utilities, sewers, streets, or structures and usually must be cleared. ...
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