Definition of "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:

  1. Small minimum investment. An investor with limited funds can accomplish diversification by owning many securities in the portfolio.
  2. Diversification. Each fund share provides an investor an interest in many real estate companies.
  3. Automatic reinvestment. Most funds permit reinvestment of dividends and capital gains. Funds usually do not assess a sales fee on automatic reinvestments.
  4. Automatic withdrawals. Many funds permit shareholders to withdraw funds on a periodic basis.
  5. Liquidity. An investor may redeem the shares owned.
  6. 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.

image of a real estate dictionary page

Have a question or comment?

We're here to help.

*** Your email address will remain confidential.
 

 

Popular Real Estate Terms

Loan with a significant down payment with the balance being paid in equal periodic payments over a short time period. There is no interest charge. An example is when a seller of real ...

The closing process is the final step of a property sale. It starts when the home seller agrees to the home buyer’s offer and it ends after all Closing costs are paid ...

Amount a manger of real estate receives for his efforts. For example, a manger is to receive 2% of rentals collected as compensation from the landlord to manage the property. If the ...

To define access rights, we must understand the need for access rights. There are several reasons for using access rights for any property; some are necessary and granted with little to no ...

Ratification is typically required when an individual makes a decision. Still, they don’t have the legal authority to make it legally enforceable. In everyday discourse, ratification ...

Welcome to the world of magical yet perplexing real estate! Undeniably, there's a lot to learn, but we're here to explain miscellaneous terminology so that you can make educated decisions. ...

(1) Sudden and dramatic increase in activity or prices. (2) Rapid economic prosperity. ...

Fluctuation in sales, profits, rat of return, etc. Likelihood of declining value. ...

The definition for the gross living area published by the Appraisal Institute’s Dictionary of Real Estate 4th Edition is: “The total area of finished, above-grade residential ...

Popular Real Estate Questions