To analyze the holdings of the better-performing ETFs can be beneficial. This can be done using publicly available data. Plentiful information is found on the top ranked holdings. They show all the managed assets. Any person can compare his or her own portfolio with them. These makes for better purchases throughout the line. Many personal buyers follow the lead of the ETFs when it comes to their possible investment. Companies can be analyzed in a greater detail if it is required to do so.

The most common strategy is to go through the top holdings of the 32 dividend ETFs. It is to kept in mind that the stocks of real estate companies should not be considered in isolation as the stocks concerning to real estate are generally organized as the Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). These have their exclusive ETF category.

To use professional software to scan any real estate, choose the Real Estate option under the Asset Class. Select ETF under Structure. Restrict the search to the non-inverse ETFs under the Attributes /Inverse. The focus is to be kept only on the American real estate markets. The software may not have such a screening feature. Then, it follows that this must be done manually.

The ETFs can be analyzed by creating a spreadsheet. The tickers of top 25 holdings of 15 top-performing real estate ETFs are to be inputted. The holding size must also be entered. The top holdings must be ranked as per the relative size of every holding to score the corresponding ticker. This system of proportional scoring always favors bigger investments over the smaller investments within the same ETF. Use the log formula to ensure that bigger ETFs have more say in the calculation of aggregate scores. To put it simply, the weights are to be assigned in proportion based on the number of digits in the assets column, minus one.

Since the proportional scores are assigned to every ticker for each ETF, and the weights get assigned to every ETF, it is then a simple matter of calculating the weighted sum so that each ticker gets an aggregate score. As per this formula, the top-ranked stock is the Simon Property Group. Public Storage comes second, followed by Prologis. AvalonBay Communities comes fourth. Welltower occupies the fifth position.