HOMZ vs VRAI

HOMZBHoya Capital Housing ETF

VRAICVirtus Real Asset Income ETF

In short

HOMZ Most housing ETFs pick a lane: homebuilders or apartment REITs. HOMZ buys the whole chain, landlords, builders, home-improvement retailers and housing finance and tech names, sizing each segment by its share of GDP.

VRAI Real assets without the futures. VRAI owns the stocks behind the stuff (REITs, pipelines, utilities, resource producers), equal-weights them, and screens for a three-year record of dividend growth. Trading since 2019, paying quarterly.

Stated mandate

HOMZ The Fund seeks to track the performance of the Hoya Capital Housing 100TM Index before fees and expenses.

VRAI The Fund seeks to track the Indxx Real Asset Income Index before fees and expenses, providing passive exposure to high-income-producing real-asset securities.

Why people hold it

• HOMZ Four housing segments in one ticker: rental operators, builders, home improvement and furnishings, and housing finance, tech and services, each sized by its contribution to GDP rather than market cap.sec.gov
• The 2019 original: launched as the first ETF offering diversified exposure across the entire US housing sector, and still tracking the index its adviser built.prnewswire.com
• 0.30% a year, below the 0.45% median for its index-tracking peers, on an index reconstituted and rebalanced on a set schedule each June and December.sec.govsec.gov 2
• Distributions arrive monthly rather than quarterly, a cadence more common among bond funds than equity sector funds.

• VRAI Three real-asset sleeves in one ticker: REITs, listed infrastructure, and natural resource companies, equal-weighted so no single mega-cap sets the tone.virtus.comvirtus.com 2
• Buys the equities, not the barrels. No commodity futures or direct hard assets, and the index keeps master limited partnerships to 20% of the basket.virtus.comvirtus.com 2
• Income with a quality filter: the index emphasizes companies that grew dividends over the prior three years, not simply the fattest current yields. Pays quarterly.virtus.com
• At 0.55%, the fee sits just under the typical thematic peer, and the fund lands in the upper half of that peer group on our overall read.

Worth knowing

• HOMZ A small, thinly traded fund. Spreads can run wider than on mega-cap index trackers, and small funds carry more risk of being closed or repositioned.
• One industry, roughly 100 stocks. Housing moves with mortgage rates and construction cycles, so this can drift well apart from a broad market fund.
• Cheap for a themed index fund, still a multiple of plain broad-market trackers: SCHK charges 0.03% and VT 0.06%.

• VRAI Small and thinly traded, so spreads can run wider than the blue-chip pipelines and REITs inside it would suggest.
• Equal weighting brings a smaller-company tilt, and real-asset sectors answer to rates and commodity cycles, so it moves on its own schedule.virtus.com
• Cheaper thematic options exist (LRND at 0.14%, TECB at 0.30%), though neither is doing this real-asset income job.

Full HOMZ profile⁠

Full VRAI profile⁠