There are many high quality high yield REITs out there.

At the moment the subsector to avoid is commercial office real estate, not so much due to bad forecasted performance from office vacancy but from the herd effect around that risk.

When interest rates are rising, the REITS and REIT preferreds get hit just like bonds do, driving up the yields. Now that rates are stabilizing, several high quality REITs' prices are starting to rebound due to the extremely attractive yields from those that have great AFFO, especially in other sectors.

For research, there are a number of REIT focused groups / authors on Seeking Alpha. One of the top ones is Brad Thomas.

BN/BAM have some complicated machinations to follow but are two of the biggest RE owners.

FC