Buying digital real estate

You may not think of real estate as an exciting technology play, but if you buy into the real estate investment trust (REIT) Digital Realty Trust (NYSE: DLR), that’s exactly what you’re getting. When you post a message or photo to your favorite social media site, that data must be stored somewhere. Digital Realty owns and operates data centers, which are facilities designed to reliably and securely house servers and other network equipment. The company leases out space to tenants that include Facebook, IBM, Verizon and Uber — in fact, Digital Realty has more than 2,300 customers renting its more than 32 million square feet of space. Over time, as data has become more sophisticated and voluminous, it requires even more storage space. The growing need for data centers isn’t expected to slow down. Digital Realty has grown tremendously over the past decade or so, and there’s reason to believe that the growth still is in the relatively early stages. Investors can get all that potential along with a dividend that recently yielded 3.8 percent, and that should grow more over time.