WASHINGTON, DC—By any measure—and we are about to discuss two of them—US REITs had a banner year in 2014. Industry association NAREIT reports that US REITs doubled both the total return and dividend yield of the S&P 500 by yearend. SNL Financial has separately reported much the same.

The FTSE NAREIT All REITs Index finished the year with a total return of 27.15% and a dividend yield of 4% at December 31. The FTSE NAREIT All Equity REITs Index produced a 28.03% total return and a 3.56% dividend yield at year-end. The FTSE NAREIT Mortgage REITs Index delivered a 17.88% total return with a 10.66% dividend yield by December 2014.

By contrast, the S&P 500 produced a 13.69% total return for the year with a 2% dividend yield at year-end.

In short, REITs continued their long-standing track record of beating the equity market, NAREIT president and CEO Steven A. Wechsler, says in a prepared statement. "The compound annual total returns of the FTSE NAREIT All Equity REITs Index have outperformed those of the S&P 500 for the past 1-, 5-, 10-, 15-, 20-, 25-, 35-, and 40-year periods ending December 31, 2014."

SNL, for its part, calculates that its SNL US REIT Equity index finished the year with a dividend yield of 3.43%, compared to the 10-year Treasury note yield of 2.17% at yearend. The spread between the SNL US REIT Equity index and the 10-year T-Note grew to 126 basis points at year-end 2014 from 87 basis points at year-end 2013.

This year's performance is promising to be solid as well, SNL predicts. It estimates that traded US equity REITs are expected to grow Funds From Operations (a key performance metric for REITs) by a median of 7.4% in 2015.

The hotel sector tops the list, with median projected FFO growth of 16.6% for the year. Self-storage REITs are next, with a projected FFO growth of 12.3%. Office and diversified REITs are at the bottom of the stack, with median projected FFO growth for 2015 for those two sectors at 5.2% and 4.9%, respectively.

Other factoids from the reports:

• In 2014, according to NAREIT, residential REITs were the top performing major REIT market sector, followed by manufactured homes and apartment REITs delivering total returns of 46.20% and 39.62%, respectively.

• Health Care REITs delivered the second best performance of 2014 with total returns of 33.32%, NAREIT said.

• Regional malls recording a 2.08% increase for December and a 32.64% total return for 2014 as a whole.

• Lodging and Resort REITs rose 2.98% in December to finish the year with a total return of 32.50 percent.

• Self-Storage REIT total returns were up 31.44% in 2014; Diversified REITs were up 27.18%; Office REITs were up 25.86%; and Industrial REITs were up 21%.

• The SNL US Manufactured Home REIT index led all REIT indexes in 2014, with a total return for the year of 46%.

• The SNL US Multifamily REIT index was next on the list, with a 2014 total return of 40.5%. The health care, regional mall, hotel, self-storage and shopping center sectors all also outperformed the SNL US REIT Equity index in 2014.

• Diversified REITs were at the bottom of the list with a total return of 17.1% for 2014, which was still more than 3 percentage points higher than the S&P 500's total return for the year.