DESK vs SCHH

DESKFVanEck Office and Commercial REIT ETF

SCHHASchwab U.S. REIT ETF

In short

DESK Office towers, isolated. DESK tracks an index of US office and commercial REITs, roughly two dozen landlords, so the work-from-home debate comes through undiluted instead of buried in a broad property fund.

SCHH Landlord exposure at a rounding-error price. SCHH owns the US equity REIT market, roughly 120 of them, for 0.07% a year, a fraction of what the typical real estate fund charges.

Stated mandate

DESK DESK is designed to closely follow, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of an index representing U.S. office and commercial REITs.

SCHH The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, an index of U.S. equity-classified real estate investment trusts.

Why people hold it

• DESK Broad REIT funds bury offices among warehouses, cell towers and data centers. DESK's index is built only from US-listed office and commercial REITs, so the exposure stays undiluted.vaneck.com
• At 0.51%, the fee sits right at the median for real estate ETFs we grade and well under niche peers like CLIM at 0.90%.
• Plain index plumbing from a house that has run thematic REIT funds for years (see MORT): published index, roughly two dozen names, quarterly distributions.

• SCHH 0.07% a year undercuts every major broad REIT rival: VNQ at 0.13%, USRT, FREL and XLRE at 0.08%, against a 0.37% category median.
• Straight-up landlords. The index covers US equity-classified REITs, the companies that own and rent property, not the wider real estate services trade.schwabassetmanagement.com
• It hugs its index about as closely as anything in the broad US REIT group, one of the strongest implementations among its peers.
• A multi-billion-dollar fund that trades heavily, which keeps spreads tight for retail-size orders and has done since its 2011 launch.

Worth knowing

• DESK One property type, roughly two dozen holdings. Office rent and vacancy news lands on the whole portfolio at once, with no other REIT sectors to soften it.
• A small, thinly traded fund launched in 2023. Wider bid-ask spreads and less depth on the screen come with the territory.
• Against the real estate ETFs we cover, it lands in the lower half, mostly on concentration and the volatility that a single-sector sleeve carries.

• SCHH One sector, about 120 names. It moves with property markets and interest rates, not the broad market, so the ride is bumpier than a total-market fund.
• Income arrives quarterly, not monthly, which matters if you budget off distributions.
• US only, and equity REITs only: no overseas property and no mortgage REITs in the mix.schwabassetmanagement.com

Full DESK profile⁠

Full SCHH profile⁠