REZ vs XLRE

REZCiShares Residential and Multisector Real Estate ETF

XLREAState Street Real Estate Select Sector SPDR ETF

In short

REZ The REIT fund that skips the office towers and the malls. REZ owns apartments, rentals, healthcare properties and self-storage, the real estate people live in, age in and stash their stuff in, and it has done so since 2007.

XLRE The S&P 500's landlords in one ticker: about 30 large-cap real estate companies, mortgage REITs excluded, for 0.08% a year. It launched in 2015, before real estate was even its own market sector.

Stated mandate

REZ The fund seeks to track an index of U.S. residential, healthcare, and self-storage real estate equities.

XLRE The fund seeks to provide investment results that generally correspond to the price and yield performance of the Real Estate Select Sector Index, representing the real estate sector of the S&P 500 Index.

Why people hold it

• REZ Narrow by design: residential, healthcare and self-storage landlords, so apartments and rental housing drive it rather than offices, malls and cell towers.ishares.com
• Does what the label says: it stays close to the FTSE Nareit All Residential Capped Index instead of drifting toward generic broad-market REIT exposure.
• Live since 2007, so its record spans the housing crash, the rate shock and the pandemic rent cycle. No other fund in its real estate peer group tracks this same index.
• Roughly 40 property owners, with distributions paid quarterly.

• XLRE 0.08% a year sits at the floor of the real estate peer group, where the median fund charges several times more.
• Clean mandate: S&P 500 real estate management, development and equity REITs, with mortgage REITs left out, so no mortgage paper rides along in a property fund.ssga.com
• A multi-billion-dollar fund and one of the most actively traded names in its category, which usually shows up as tight spreads when you click buy.
• Running since 2015, arriving before S&P and MSCI split real estate out as its own sector in 2016. Pays quarterly, and ranks among the stronger builds in a crowded lineup.reit.com

Worth knowing

• REZ At 0.48% a year it costs more than plain broad REIT index funds such as SCHH (0.07%) and VNQ (0.13%). The housing tilt is what the extra fee buys.
• Thinly traded next to the largest REIT funds, which can mean wider bid-ask spreads at the moment of a trade.
• Leaving out offices, malls, data centers and towers means stretches where it moves quite differently from a broad REIT benchmark.

• XLRE About 30 holdings, so the largest positions carry real weight and one company's stumble is felt across the fund.
• The S&P 500 sets the universe, so REITs that never reach large-cap index status stay outside the portfolio.ssga.comsec.gov
• This is one slice of the market, moving with the property cycle rather than blending into a broad index.

Full REZ profile⁠

Full XLRE profile⁠