Is Realogy Holdings (RLGY) a Smart Long-term Buy?

Longleaf Partners Small-Cap Fund, a Memphis-based fund under Southeastern Asset Management, recently released its Q3 2020 Investor Letter, a copy of which you can download here. The fund posted a return of 22.2% for the quarter, outperforming its benchmark, the Russell 2000 Index which returned 4.93% in the same quarter. You should check out Longleaf Partners’ top 5 stock picks for investors to buy right now, which could be the biggest winners of 2021.

In the Q3 2020 Investor Letter, Longleaf Partners highlighted a few stocks and Realogy Holdings Corp. (NYSE:RLGY) is one of them. Realogy Holdings Corp. (NYSE:RLGY) engages in the provision of residential real estate services. Year-to-date, Realogy Holdings Corp. (NYSE:RLGY) stock gained 53.4% and on December 21st it had a closing price of $14.85. Here is what Longleaf Partners said:

“Realogy (27%, 1.41%), the residential brokerage franchisor, was another strong contributor. Although quarterly numbers in both the Franchise and Owned Brokers businesses appeared anemic due to April’s nearly frozen market, home sales picked up by the end of the second quarter and have surged in the third. The company amended its credit covenants to allow for another year of higher leverage ratios on depressed trailing annual EBITDA until its sales normalize. Realogy’s Title business also cashed in on the refinance boom and doubled its EBITDA contribution during the quarter. CEO Ryan Schneider deserves credit for not panicking in the worst moments in March and April, and the company is poised to de-lever rapidly in today’s healthy homes sales market.”

Residential REIT Stocks

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In Q2 2020, the number of bullish hedge fund positions on Realogy Holdings Corp. (NYSE:RLGY) stock decreased by about 4% from the previous quarter (see the chart here), so a number of other hedge fund managers don’t believe in Realogy’s growth potential. Our calculations showed that Realogy Holdings Corp. (NYSE:RLGY) isn’t ranked among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.

The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 216% since the end of 2014 and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 121 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. Below you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.

Video: Top 5 Stocks Among Hedge Funds

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 10 most profitable companies in the world to pick the best large-cap stocks to buy. 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.