"Cole's long-term focus has been, andcontinues to be, helping individual investors become the landlordsof America's industry-leading corporations."

The words of company founder and executive chairman ChristopherCole sum up the 33-year track record of Cole Real EstateInvestments, among the industry's most active buyers ofsingletenant properties, and the affiliated Cole Capital, whichsponsors the non-traded REITs that are the vehicles for thoseindividual as well as institutional investors. Cole-relatedentities now own and manage approximately 60 million square feet ofcommercial real estate in 47 states; the company has built up thatportfolio conservatively and painstakingly, with a combination ofdiscipline and purpose.

Playing the roulette wheel is not Cole's style; it zeroes in onstrong, stable cash flow. "We obviously have a very small box,focused primarily on single-tenant assets, so it's hard to straytoo much into other areas that have more risk," relates Thomas W.Roberts, executive vice president and head of real estateinvestments at Cole REIT. Between 2010 and 2011, the Phoenix-basedcompany acquired some $5 billion worth of assets net-leased to thecredit-tenant likes of Walmart, PetSmart and the University ofPhoenix, but its team also winnowed out many more potential dealsthrough the underwriting process.