The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday edition that the real estate market is a hot topic. The Globe's guest columnist Sean Pugliese writes in the Number Cruncher column that he and his colleague Allan Meyer thought they would analyze the Canadian real estate sector using their investment philosophy focused on safety and value. This includes both corporations and real estate investment trusts that hold a variety of asset types such as commercial, office, residential and industrial. They only considered companies with a market capitalization of $1-billion or more. They say market cap is a starting point for safety -- larger is better. The sector is known for providing shareholders with a high level of income through distributions (trusts), or dividends (corporations). Yield is the projected annualized distribution or dividend divided by the unit or share price. They analyzed real estate using adjusted funds from operations, which is a key metric and often considered a more accurate predictor than earnings or cash-flow based measures. Mr. Pugliese and Mr. Meyer's recommended picks are Artis REIT, Dream Office REIT, Crombie REIT, CT REIT and Cominar REIT.