Just realized something about the income investing setup right now. When money market yields are tanking from 5% toward 3%, where are income hunters supposed to go? That's when net lease REITs start looking really interesting for people seeking best REITs for income.

Here's the thing about net lease REITs—they're basically the landlords of boring real estate. They own the CVS down your street, the Walmart at the intersection, the warehouses you see on the highway. The genius part? The tenant pays all the bills. Taxes, insurance, maintenance—that's on the tenant. The REIT just collects rent checks and moves on. No emergency phone calls when the roof leaks. It's honestly a clean business model.

The math works like this: REIT buys property, tenant signs net lease, tenant covers expenses, REIT collects rent and passes dividends to shareholders. Repeat. It's almost too simple, but that's why it works.

Now here's why the timing is compelling. The Fed is cutting rates, which means bond funds and money market accounts aren't paying squat anymore. But dividend-paying REITs? They're still yielding solid returns. Plus, AI and automation are keeping wage inflation soft, giving the Fed more room to cut than people expect. That's tailwind for income stocks.

Take W.P. Carey (WPC). In late 2023, management cut the quarterly dividend to $0.86, and vanilla investors panicked and sold. But that wasn't really a cut—it was a spin-off. WPC shipped out 59 office properties into a separate REIT called NLOP, then methodically monetized those office assets. Shareholders got special distributions of $4.10, $5.10, and $6.75 per NLOP share over a few months. That's nearly $16 per NLOP share—about a buck per WPC share in actual cash that most people missed while complaining about the dividend "cut."

Meanwhile, the original WPC is humming. Over 99% of their rent comes with built-in annual escalators. In 2025, they closed $2.1 billion in new investments at an estimated 9.2% average yield. With a 97% occupancy rate and an office-free portfolio, WPC is quietly crushing it while the market's still stuck on 2023 headlines.

Then there's Agree Realty (ADC). It pays monthly dividends at 4.2% and focuses on investment-grade retailers like Walmart and Home Depot—the recession-proof stuff. But here's their secret weapon: ground leases. ADC owns the land while the tenant owns the building. So they're collecting rent on dirt while someone else worries about maintenance. As of year-end 2025, ground leases represented over 10% of their annualized base rent at $75 million. That's real portfolio diversification.

Agree has been aggressive too. In 2025, they acquired 305 retail net-lease properties for $1.44 billion at a 7.2% cap rate with an 11.5-year average lease term. Management is targeting $1.5 billion in acquisitions for 2026. They're basically playing Net-Lease Monopoly, stacking quality tenants and long leases.

So yeah, these yields at 5.2% and 4.2% might not sound crazy compared to some alternatives, but the total return picture is solid. When cash is dropping from 5% to 3%, income investors are rotating out and back into dividend payers. Net lease REITs not only pay but tend to appreciate in price during these cycles. If you're looking at best REITs for income in this environment, these are worth the deep dive.