Great that you read that entire piece. You now know more about mREIT risk than 99% of those who buy them. Learning about their checkered history isn't easy since existing mREITs don't go back very far.
mREITs are often bought for retirement income where the focus should on failure risk rather than on the size of next month's dividend. Key point is that these trusts have failed... fairly often, and not always so long ago.
Those who insist in buying mREITs should look into the underlying portfolio, with insured agency MBS historically being the much safer way to go.
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On that 700% mentioned in the article, note that years ago, amid much higher inflation, it was easy to earn 7%, 8%, sometimes even 10% in long term bonds or even bank CDs with almost zero risk.
Generally, mREITs have been poor retirement investments.
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