Here's How Many Shares of Realty Income You'd Need for $2,000 in Monthly Dividends

Source The Motley Fool

Key Points

  • Real estate investment trust Realty Income pays a monthly dividend.

  • Its dividend payment boasts an incredibly impressive track record.

  • This REIT is a fantastic income holding regardless of how much capital you can commit to it.

  • 10 stocks we like better than Realty Income ›

Most investors know that most dividend-paying stocks pay dividends quarterly. That's not true of every dividend stock, though. Real estate investment trust (REIT) Realty Income (NYSE: O) pays a dividend every month, aligning with how most people pay their bills for ordinary living expenses.

This begs the question: How many shares of this brick-and-mortar retailers' landlord would you need to own to collect $2,000 worth of monthly dividend income?

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It's not too difficult to figure out. With a current monthly payment of $0.2715 per share, a little over 7,366 shares would do the trick ($2,000 divided by $0.2715 = 7,366.5). That works out to about $440,000 worth of this stock, if you were stepping in at its current price.

A person seated at a desk in front of a laptop, using a calculator.

Image source: Getty Images.

That's admittedly a ton of money for most investors to commit to a single position. Most people don't have that much money to build an entire portfolio with, in fact.

This income holding may be worth its income potential, no matter how much or how little you can invest in it. Not only has Realty Income reliably paid its monthly dividend like clockwork for decades now, it has raised its per-share payout in each of the past 31 years.

There's no end to this streak in sight, either. Not only does this REIT regularly boast occupancy rates in excess of 98%, but it's easing its way into the artificial intelligence data center business as well.

Newcomers will be stepping into a forward-looking dividend yield of 5.4%, by the way. Even if the potential for capital gains with this ticker is modest, you'd be hard-pressed to find a higher starting yield from a company with comparable upside and risk.

Should you buy stock in Realty Income right now?

Before you buy stock in Realty Income, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Realty Income wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $417,413!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,341,294!*

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See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of September 13, 2026.

James Brumley has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Realty Income. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Disclaimer: For information purposes only. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
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