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Is T. Rowe Price Real Estate (TRREX) a Strong Mutual Fund Pick Right Now?

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If you have been looking for Mutual Fund Equity Report funds, a place to start could be T. Rowe Price Real Estate (TRREX - Free Report) . TRREX bears a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 1 (Strong Buy), which is based on various forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance.

History of Fund/Manager

T. Rowe Price is based in Baltimore, MD, and is the manager of TRREX. Since T. Rowe Price Real Estate made its debut in February of 1998, TRREX has garnered more than $759 million in assets. Nina Jones is the fund's current manager and has held that role since January of 2019.

Performance

Investors naturally seek funds with strong performance. This fund has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 3.62%, and it sits in the bottom third among its category peers. If you're interested in shorter time frames, do not dismiss looking at the fund's 3-year annualized total return of 10.95%, which places it in the middle third during this time-frame.

When looking at a fund's performance, it is also important to note the standard deviation of the returns. The lower the standard deviation, the less volatility the fund experiences. Compared to the category average of 19.16%, the standard deviation of TRREX over the past three years is 20.49%. The standard deviation of the fund over the past 5 years is 20.58% compared to the category average of 16.63%. This makes the fund more volatile than its peers over the past half-decade.

Risk Factors

Investors should not forget about beta, an important way to measure a mutual fund's risk compared to the market as a whole. TRREX has a 5-year beta of 0.93, which means it is likely to be less volatile than the market average. Because alpha represents a portfolio's performance on a risk-adjusted basis relative to a benchmark, which is the S&P 500 in this case, one should pay attention to this metric as well. The fund has produced a negative alpha over the past 5 years of -5.73, which shows that managers in this portfolio find it difficult to pick securities that generate better-than-benchmark returns.

Expenses

For investors, taking a closer look at cost-related metrics is key, since costs are increasingly important for mutual fund investing. Competition is heating up in this space, and a lower cost product will likely outperform its otherwise identical counterpart, all things being equal. In terms of fees, TRREX is a no load fund. It has an expense ratio of 0.82% compared to the category average of 1.19%. So, TRREX is actually cheaper than its peers from a cost perspective.

Investors should also note that the minimum initial investment for the product is $2,500 and that each subsequent investment needs to be at $100.

Bottom Line

Overall, T. Rowe Price Real Estate ( TRREX ) has a high Zacks Mutual Fund rank, and in conjunction with its comparatively weak performance, average downside risk, and lower fees, T. Rowe Price Real Estate ( TRREX ) looks like a great potential choice for investors right now.

This could just be the start of your research on TRREXin the Mutual Fund Equity Report category. Consider going to www.zacks.com/funds/mutual-funds for additional information about this fund, and all the others that we rank as well for additional information. If you want to check out our stock reports as well, make sure to go to Zacks.com to see all of the great tools we have to offer, including our time-tested Zacks Rank.


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