Real Estate Investment Trusts. Real estate investment trusts, or REITs, allow investors to invest in real estate similar to how they invest in a mutual fund. Investors pool their money for ownership in different real estate interests. The average 20-year rate of return for REITs is 11.8 percent. How to Maximize Your Retirement Rate of Return Rental real estate properties are a great way to make money and build wealth. As a landlord, it’s important for you to know how to calculate the rate of return on a rental property to determine its efficacy as an investment.. Every real estate investor knows the importance of the return on investment (ROI) – that popular real estate investment metric used to estimate and evaluate the The Rate of Return (ROR) is the gain or loss of an investment over a period of time copmared to the initial cost of the investment expressed as a percentage. This guide teaches the most common formulas for calculating different types of rates of returns including total return, annualized return, ROI, ROA, ROE, IRR