Just dug this out from The Economist Online (originally published in print on September 9, 2004)… Can’t help but wonder what kind of yields these index values correpond to; in other words, if someone bought a house today and rented it out tomorrow, what kind of current income would they be receiving?

Since the question seems difficult to answer directly, can there be a clue in the world of publicly traded companies?

A quick look at AIMCO, a large apartment building operator, reveals book assets of $10 billion and operating income of $329 million; operating yield, therefore, appears to be just above 3%. This doesn’t look like a lot…

Of course, the approximation is crude, but is there a better one?