3 Landlord Stocks That Collect the Rent and Pay You the Dividends

3 Landlord Stocks That Collect the Rent and Pay You the Dividends

Chris Lange

Fri, September 4, 2026 at 6:11 PM GMT+3 8 min read

Quick Read

• Realty Income (O) and Agree Realty (ADC) deliver monthly rent checks backed by AFFO payout ratios below 75% and near-perfect portfolio occupancy above 99%.

• NNN REIT extends a 37-year streak of annual dividend increases, with only 2.5% floating-rate debt exposure and a disciplined 69% AFFO payout ratio.

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A net lease means the tenant, not the landlord, pays property taxes, building insurance, and maintenance costs. That structure strips the landlord's expense line down to almost nothing, which is why net lease REITs can pass through unusually predictable rent to shareholders. For a sense of scale, Realty Income owns over 15,500 properties across all 50 U.S. states, the United Kingdom, and eight other European countries, and its portfolio ran at 98.8% occupancy at the end of Q2. All three names below are equity REITs, not mortgage REITs, so the cash flows come from owning buildings and collecting rent, not from spread lending.

Realty Income: Scale, Diversification, and a Monthly Check

Realty Income (NYSE:O) is the largest name in the space, with a market cap of roughly $58.4B and a portfolio split across retail (78.3% of ABR), industrial (16.2%), gaming (3.1%), and other (2.4%). Tenants range from convenience stores to logistics warehouses, and the company recently expanded into digital infrastructure with a $6 billion programmatic hyperscale data center joint venture with Cloud Capital in which Realty Income expects to invest up to $1.4 billion over time for its 45% equity interest.

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The latest declared monthly dividend was $0.271 per share, with a next payment date of September 15, 2026, and an annualized forward dividend of $3.252. The dividend yield sits at 5.02%, backed by 670 consecutive monthly dividends declared and 115 consecutive quarterly increases. On coverage, management raised 2026 AFFO per share guidance to $4.44 to $4.45, roughly 4% growth at the midpoint, which comfortably clears the annualized dividend rate. Q2 AFFO per share was $1.09, up 3.8% YoY, with same-store rent growth of 1.2% and rent recapture of 102.7%.

Scale gives Realty Income access to deals other REITs cannot underwrite, including the data center JV and its Realty Income Investment Management platform, which now holds $3.5B in third-party AUM. Q2 investment volume was roughly $2.6 billion at a 7.3% initial cash yield. The risk: tenant credit mix. 65.7% of ABR comes from non-investment-grade clients, and leverage ticked up to 5.4x net debt to annualized pro forma adjusted EBITDAre from 5.2x in Q1. First-half credit loss provisions ran $46.4M. This is a durable payer with a complexity discount attached.

Agree Realty: Investment Grade Retail, Monthly Cadence

Agree Realty (NYSE:ADC) is a pure-play retail net lease REIT with a market cap of roughly $9.05B. Its top tenants read like a list of retail survivors: Walmart, Tractor Supply, Dollar General, Hobby Lobby, O'Reilly Auto Parts, TJX Companies, CVS, Best Buy, and Kroger. The portfolio holds 2,825 properties across all 50 states plus DC, with occupancy at 99.8% and approximately 65.8% of portfolio ABR from investment-grade retail tenants.

The latest monthly dividend was $0.267 per share, with a next payment date of September 15, 2026, and an annualized forward dividend of $3.204. That July 2026 declaration represented a 4.3% YoY increase. On payout coverage, management stated the dividend is well covered, with a payout ratio of 70% of AFFO per share for the second quarter, and Q2 AFFO per share was $1.14, up 7.4% YoY. Full-year 2026 AFFO per share guidance was raised to $4.57 to $4.59, roughly 5.8% midpoint growth.

Agree ran Q2 credit and occupancy loss of just 0.06%, closed record quarterly acquisitions of $501.7M across 102 properties at a 7.0% cap rate with an 11.2-year weighted average lease term, and reports $1.9B of liquidity with net debt to recurring EBITDA of 5.2x, or 3.7x pro forma. Investment-grade issuer ratings from Fitch (A-), Moody's (Baa1), and S&P (BBB+) anchor the funding cost. The risk: this is an equity-funded growth model. Interest expense rose to $40.3M from $32.3M YoY, and continued equity issuance to fund acquisitions can pressure per-share metrics. Q2 EPS of $0.44 came in missing estimates of $0.47 for that reason.

NNN REIT: Quarterly Payer With 37 Straight Annual Hikes

NNN REIT (NYSE:NNN) is a pure-play retail net lease REIT with a market cap of roughly $8.6B. Unlike O and ADC, NNN pays a quarterly dividend, not a monthly one, which income planners should note when mapping cash flows. The portfolio holds 3,774 single-tenant freestanding properties across all 50 U.S. states, DC, and Puerto Rico, with tenant exposure concentrated in automotive service (18.6% of ABR), convenience stores (15.9%), restaurants (14.0%), entertainment (7.3%), and dealerships (6.4%). Top tenants include 7-Eleven, Mister Car Wash, Dave & Buster's, Camping World, and Flynn Restaurant Group.

The latest quarterly dividend was $0.62 per share, paid August 14, 2026, with an annualized forward dividend of $2.48. That was a 3.3% increase and marked the 37th consecutive annual dividend increase. On AFFO coverage, management said on the call that "The new dividend rate equates to a 5.3% annualized dividend yield and a healthy 69% AFFO payout ratio." Q2 AFFO per diluted share was $0.90, up 5.9% YoY, and 2026 AFFO per share guidance was raised to $3.55 to $3.59. Occupancy stood at 99.1%, up 110 basis points YoY, with a weighted average remaining lease term of 10.1 years.

NNN funds itself with only 2.5% floating-rate debt exposure, generated approximately $56 million of free cash flow after the dividend in the quarter, and describes its watch list as "immaterial at this time." Q2 acquisitions were 89 properties for $291.0M at a 7.3% initial cash cap rate with a 17.9-year WALT, weighted toward direct sale-leaseback relationships. The risk: retail tenant concentration in categories exposed to consumer cyclicality, and interest expense of $53.5M vs $49.3M YoY is trending higher as debt reprices.

Roster Summary

Bottom Line for Income Investors

These three do the same job in different flavors. Realty Income offers the deepest diversification and monthly cash, with real complexity to underwrite. Agree Realty offers the cleanest investment-grade retail book and the fastest AFFO growth of the three. NNN offers the longest dividend growth streak and the lowest floating-rate exposure, on a quarterly cadence. For a retiree building a rent-check ladder, all three clear the coverage bar on AFFO, which is the metric that matters for REIT payouts. If a monthly payment schedule is the whole point for you, we rounded up seven of our favorite monthly payers, across REITs and beyond, in a free report you can grab here.

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