On the desk today · Realty Income Corporation
The check has arrived every month since 1969. It has never gotten smaller.
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670 Checks
and Counting
In 1969, a man named Bill Clark walked into a Taco Bell in Northridge, California, and made a deal with Glen Bell — the man who founded the chain. Clark didn't want to run the restaurant. He wanted to own the building and the land underneath it. He would lease the property back to Bell under a long-term agreement. Bell would pay rent every month. Clark would collect the check. That single Taco Bell became the first property in a company Clark and his wife Joan founded that year in San Diego. They called it Realty Income. The idea was simple — and it hasn't changed in 57 years: own the real estate, lease it to a business, and send investors a check every month.
I drove past a Dollar General last week on a two-lane road outside a small town. Flat building. Parking lot. Nothing fancy. I thought about who owned the building. Not Dollar General — they rent it. Someone else owns the walls, the lot, the roof. And every month, a rent check leaves Dollar General's mailbox and lands in someone else's account. For thousands of buildings just like that one, the someone is Realty Income.
Most people hear "REIT" and think office towers or apartment complexes. Realty Income is different. It owns single-tenant, freestanding commercial buildings — the kind you drive past every day without a second thought. Gas stations. Pharmacies. Convenience stores. Dollar stores. And every lease is triple-net — meaning the tenant pays the property taxes, the insurance, and the maintenance. Realty Income just collects the rent.
Clark founded the company on May 27, 1969. It went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1994 under the ticker "O." Today, Sumit Roy runs the operation from San Diego. The company has trademarked the phrase "The Monthly Dividend Company" — and it means it. Since 1969, Realty Income has declared roughly 670 consecutive monthly dividends. It has increased the dividend 131 times since going public. Not once in 57 years has the check gotten smaller.
The numbers from 2025 show you the scale. Total revenue was $5.7 billion. Net income available to shareholders was $1.1 billion. The company invested $6.3 billion in new properties during the year. And as of early 2025, the portfolio held more than 15,600 properties across all 50 states, the United Kingdom, and eight other European countries. Occupancy stood at 98.7%. That's 98.7% of 15,600 buildings — sending rent checks — every single month.
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That 670 number is the one I keep coming back to. Six hundred and seventy months in a row. Through recessions, rate spikes, a pandemic, and two wars. The check arrived in 2008 when banks were failing. It arrived in April 2020 when the economy was shut down. It arrived last month. If you owned the stock in 1994 and reinvested every dividend, your $10,000 is worth roughly $487,000 today. That's a 13.3% compound annual return — for 31 years — from a company that owns Dollar Generals and Walgreens.
The pricing power is baked into every lease. Realty Income's contracts include annual rent escalators — fixed increases or adjustments tied to the consumer price index. When inflation runs at 4%, the rent rises with it. No phone call. No negotiation. The escalator is written into the contract on day one. And when a lease expires and Realty Income re-leases the property, it captured 103.5% of the prior rent in the third quarter of 2025. The new tenant paid more than the old one. Every time.
I find myself thinking about that first Taco Bell. Bill Clark could have started anywhere. He could have done office buildings. Apartments. Shopping malls. Instead, he picked a single freestanding restaurant on a corner in Northridge and structured a deal where the tenant paid everything — taxes, insurance, maintenance — and Clark just collected rent. That was 1969. Today, Realty Income owns 15,600 buildings in nine countries. The structure is identical. The tenant pays. The landlord collects. The check goes out. Realty Income's 2025 annual report opened with a single phrase: "Consistency through market cycles." Four words. Fifty-seven years of evidence behind them.
The flywheel runs on reinvestment. Every dollar of rent that comes in gets recycled into new properties. In 2025, Realty Income deployed $6.3 billion into acquisitions at an average initial yield of 7% or better. Each new building adds another rent check. Each rent check funds the next acquisition. And because the leases include built-in escalators, the existing checks get larger every year — even before you account for new acquisitions.
WHY THIS WORKS
Triple-net means zero operating cost. The tenant pays taxes, insurance, and maintenance. Realty Income collects rent and sends it to shareholders. The landlord's expenses are nearly nonexistent.
Built-in rent escalators pass through inflation. Annual CPI adjustments or fixed increases are written into every lease. When prices rise, rent rises — automatically, contractually, and without asking.
Recession-resistant tenants. Dollar stores, pharmacies, convenience stores, and grocery chains don't close in downturns. People still need milk, medicine, and toothpaste. The rent keeps arriving.
670 months of proof. No theory. No promise. Fifty-seven years of monthly checks — through every economic condition the modern era has produced. The track record is the moat.
What most people miss: Realty Income started with a single Taco Bell in 1969 — bought from the man who invented the chain. Today it owns 15,600 buildings in nine countries and has sent a check every month for 670 months straight. The company trademarked the phrase "The Monthly Dividend Company." It's the only REIT in America where the dividend schedule is the brand.
