Is Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc. (ELS) A Smart Long-Term Buy?

Baron Funds, an asset management firm, published its “Baron Real Estate Fund” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 11.08% was delivered by the fund’s institutional shares for the Q1 of 2021, exceeding the MSCI US REIT Index, which appreciated 8.50%, and modestly underperforming the MSCI USA IMI Extended Real Estate Index which rose 12.205 for the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

Baron Real Estate Fund, in its Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc. (NYSE: ELS), and shared their insights on the company. Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc. is a Chicago, Illinois-based real estate investment trust company that currently has a $12.5 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, ELS delivered an 8.59% return, extending its 12-month gains to 22.57%. As of May 12, 2021, the stock closed at $67.70 per share.

Here is what Baron Real Estate Fund has to say about Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc. in its Q1 2021 investor letter:

“The Fund also has investments in REITs that would benefit from this movement out of urban areas into suburban areas. In the aftermath of the economic impact from the Coronavirus, we expect demand for affordable housing to benefit manufactured housing REIT Equity Lifestyle Properties, Inc.

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Our calculations show that Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc. (NYSE: ELS) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc. was in 24 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 28 funds in the third quarter. ELS delivered a 9.97% return in the past 3 months.

The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best innovative stocks to buy to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website:

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.