I happen to have a couple of REITS that focus mostly on Health care real estate. Some acute care stuff along with long term elderly facilities. They do consistently well in terms of dividends. (I guess people are going to continue to get old) Now, I don't know about out West, but here in the East, there's a waiting list for most elderly people trying to get in to these facilities. Remember, with these classes of securities, you don't want to just look at the market value of the stock; they've taken a hit recently, just like everybody else. Instead, pay attention on their enterprise value. Keep in mind, some of these REITS can have enterprise values twice (or more) that of their market values. That's real brick and mortar stuff they happen to own that never goes down. Granted, some venture started by two college flunkies on a laptop in a basement might prove to be profitable.....but it's risky. The way I see it is; the older you get, the more important it becomes to go for the solid stuff.
Yat
BTW, if your older, and in mutual funds............you shouldn't be. Take a hard look at dividend yielding ETFs.