By JONNELLE MARTE

As attendance at the annual Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

shareholders’ meeting has ballooned over the years, mutual-fund managers say it’s become trickier to land some personal time with Warren Buffett—but easier to take a piece of him home.

Just ask Steven Check, manager of the $19 million Blue Chip Investor

fund, who owns a coin with Mr. Buffett’s face on it, a never-been-used deck of cards that feature the Oracle of Omaha as the king, and bobbleheads of Mr. Buffett and his partner, Charlie Munger, among other Berkshire-themed possessions.

“Ten years ago you could run into him several times a night and shake his hand,” says Mr. Check, who also scored a few framed photos of himself and Mr. Buffett together during those earlier years. These days, you’re much more likely to walk away with just a Berkshire Hathaway golf club or money clip, or with some of the goods offered by the company’s subsidiaries, he says.

At the 194,300-square-foot hall that will be set up next to the meeting area next month and at other nearby vendors, you can get an insurance quote, upgrade your wardrobe or even buy a share of a private jet through one of Berkshire’s companies.

Buffett time or no Buffett time, Mr. Check and other fund managers say the real reason they make the trek to Omaha each year is to recharge with lessons from one of the best in the business. “It’s good to go there and get a reset, to clear your mind,” says Mr. Check. “I get a refresher course on the principles of investing.”

For some managers, another big draw is the opportunity to rub elbows with investing pros from around the world. With this year’s meeting, Dowe Bynum, co-manager of the $104 million Cook & Bynum

fund, will have attended 13 of the last 15 annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meetings. “It’s like a rock concert for some people, but for us and for other managers it’s a good place and time for us to meet,” he says.

Mr. Bynum, whose fund had 11% of its assets in Berkshire Hathaway at the end of 2012, making it the fund’s third-largest holding, says he and co-manager Richard Cook find two of their biggest influences in the leaders of Berkshire Hathaway. They even quote Mr. Munger on a part of their website explaining their investing philosophy: “I didn’t get to where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.”

Some Berkshire fans say the stability of Mr. Buffett’s investing style, which many of them try to emulate, makes it unnecessary to make the trip to Nebraska every year. Mark Mulholland, portfolio manager of the $490 million Matthew 25

fund, says he’ll be sitting out this year’s meeting after attending more than a dozen since 1989.

“You really have to go at least once,” says Mr. Mulholland, whose fund has 5% of its assets in Berkshire. But you don’t have to go each time, he says, because the core of Mr. Buffett’s beliefs and strategy doesn’t change that much. “He knows what he knows. It’s been time-tested,” Mr. Mulholland says, adding that there is one other, minor deterrent: “It’s also harder to book a hotel.”

Ms. Marte is a reporter for MarketWatch. Email her at jonnelle.marte@dowjones.com.

A version of this article appeared April 7, 2013, on page R8 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Managers Trek to Omaha In a Crush of Buffett Fans.

Alan Abelson wrote singularly original and often brilliant commentary about stocks and markets, but to me, he was at his most magnificent in penning deeply thoughtful tributes to recently departed friends. There was nothing quite like the Abelson treatment, so spot-on in describing the very essence of those he had admired, and so very moving. We used to joke around the office that we’d all like an Abelson sendoff — minus the prerequisite, of course.

Now it is our turn to honor Alan, and this special section is meant to do just that. We thank everyone who wrote to Barron’s to express their appreciation for him and his work. We have received more than 500 remembrances, and they’re still pouring in.

Our appreciation begins with reflections from Alan’s colleagues, past and present. Next come reminiscences from his Wall Street friends, including the members of the Barron’s Roundtable. Finally, we offer a selection of letters from readers, chosen primarily from those addressed to editors@barrons.com, none of which were made available to the public until now. You can view additional remembrances here.

As for me, I owe Alan heartfelt thanks for the opportunity to build a richly meaningful career. Although my father read Barron’s devotedly each week — I can hear him even now, cracking up in the den from one of Alan’s more hilarious turns of phrase — I was as green as they come when I landed at Barron’s doorstep. Yet Alan took me on, and soon had me traveling the country, writing cover stories, and interviewing Wall Street’s best and almost-brightest. The freedom was exhilarating. The rewrites? Don’t ask.

As an editor, Alan was unfailingly generous with his contacts, knowledge, and time. Many were the afternoons when we’d sit in his office mulling the outlook for this or that company or stock, and the virtues — or lack thereof — of sundry potential sources. He believed in intellectual adventure, along with fairness and justice, and he ran his magazine and newsroom accordingly.

Alan was a mentor of unsurpassed excellence, who sought to sharpen not just our work but our thinking. He trained us to look behind the numbers, ignore the obvious, challenge our own and readers’ assumptions, and always expose the truth, preferably in superlative prose. Some of his pupils went on to fine careers elsewhere. Some of us stayed right here, passing the lessons on to each new crop of hungry reporters.

Our teacher, mentor, and friend is gone. But the culture he built still governs Barron’s, and the work goes on.

Lauren Rublin

Deputy Managing Editor

Like other dividend plays, real-estate investment trusts have been roaring. As measured by the MSCI REIT index, they’ve returned 16% so far this year (including dividends) and 20% annually over the past three years, versus a 16% annual return in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. Some wonder whether a REIT bubble is forming similar to the situation in 2007. Dividend yields have dropped to just above 3%. The total equity value of U.S. REITs now tops $600 billion.

Mike Kirby is well equipped to assess the group. He’s a co-founder and director of research at Green Street Advisors, a Newport Beach, Calif., firm. Green Street, which started in 1985, is the leading independent research firm specializing in REITs, covering 83 North American real-estate companies and 29 in Europe. This marks the 20th anniversary of Kirby’s first interview in Barron’s (“The REIT Maze,” May 24, 1993), and two and a half years since we last spoke to him (“REITs With the Right Stuff,” Nov. 29, 2010).

Green Street has an excellent record. Its Buy recommendations have returned 25.2% annually since 1993, versus 12% for all companies in Green Street’s coverage. Hold-rated stocks have returned 11.4% since 1993, and Sells have returned just 0.1% per year.

Thomas Michael Alleman for Barron’s

“Over the next year or two, we expect to see multiple IPOs and billions of dollars of single-family housing come public as REITs.” — Mike Kirby

Kirby, 52, doesn’t think the overall sector is overvalued, and he likes some high-quality companies, including Taubman Centers

(ticker: TCO), Equity Residential

(EQR), and Vornado Realty Trust

(VNO). He also has some thoughts on one of the newer trends, REITs that own single-family homes.

Barron’s: Let’s get straight to the point. Are REITs overvalued?

Kirby: Let me start with the least-favorable comparison—stocks. REITs trade for about 25 times 2013 earnings, and when I speak of earnings, I am using AFFO, or adjusted funds from operations, which is the industry’s primary earnings benchmark. The S&P 500 trades at 15 times forward earnings. That suggests that REITs are awfully expensive. But I’ll throw you a couple of mitigating points. One is that REIT earnings growth is going to be very impressive. We project 9% growth in AFFO over the course of each of the next two years, and there is no reason that it slows down much after that because we are in the sweet spot in the real-estate cycle. Over the past eight years, REIT multiples have been much higher than the S&P 500. We have to ask ourselves if this is a new normal situation.

What else do you look at?

Given the growth outlook, REITs look pretty attractive in a low-yield world. When we add it all up, we conclude that REITs are somewhere within a fair-value range, maybe at the pricey side of that fair-value range, but certainly not dramatically overpriced.

Which sectors look best?

The mall business is not just a good business by real-estate standards; I’d argue that it is just a great business. It has performed wonderfully over the past 20 years, especially at the high end—the types of malls that Simon Property Group

[SPG], Taubman, General Growth Properties

[GGP], and Macerich

[MAC] own. These malls have done exceedingly well in good times, and their cash-flow growth has held up very well, surprisingly well, in bad times. Prospects going forward are very good.

Even with the Internet-retailing threat?

It seems that no matter what happens to the retailer environment, no matter which retailers go under, there is always somebody willing to move a new retail concept into those top-tier malls. This sector is basically trading pretty close to the REIT average on key valuation benchmarks, and yet over the long haul it’s delivered a lot more. So my first piece of advice is to overweight malls.

What else looks good?

Apartments. They have fared well over the long run. Owners haven’t had to invest as much capital to maintain their properties as is the case in other sectors. Apartments have been underperformers relative to other parts of the REIT market. The conventional wisdom is that if single-family housing is doing well, apartment rentals must not be. That’s way too simplistic. Both can thrive at the same time. We just need growth in household formation, and we are optimistic that household-formation growth is going to be pretty good in the next few years.

Anything you don’t like?

On the flip side, there are hotels and industrial properties. They tend to be systematically overpriced because investors don’t fully appreciate the capital expenses you need to keep them up. Neither one has delivered total returns on par with other sectors over the past 20 years. Hotel owners need to reinvest twice as much of their cash flow back into their properties as has been the case with other property sectors. And that doesn’t even capture the obsolescence factor. No matter how much money you spend on hotels in some markets, you are always going to have something newer and prettier come in. There are times in the cycle when it’s good to own hotels, but through a full cycle, history shows it is a tough business.

What’s your favorite mall REIT?

Taubman. We recommended it 20 years ago in Barron’s, and we still like it. It has been one of the top-performing REITs over that time period. Taubman has the most productive portfolio in the country with the highest sales per square foot of any mall operator.

What’s Taubman’s niche?

It’s a high-end-mall operator. It owns the Short Hills Mall in New Jersey, Cherry Creek in Denver, and Beverly Center in Los Angeles. Sales growth at Taubman since 2007—and, as you know, we had a little economic hiccup between 2007 and now—has been 25% cumulatively, which to me is pretty astounding, because it dwarfs the sales growth that has occurred just about anywhere else. It shows the power of high-end malls, and more importantly from a valuation perspective, it bodes well for cash-flow growth.

What kind of growth could Taubman experience?

We see 13% growth in AFFO this year and 10% next year.

How is it valued?

It trades around $86, which is below our estimate of its net asset value of $88.50. Its AFFO yield for this year is 3.3%, which is lower than the REIT average, but it’s very much in line with the mall average. Given our growth expectations, we think that’s fine.

What’s the upside?

Over the next 12 months, we think REITs will generate a total return of 7% or 8%. For Taubman and the stocks that we feature as Buys, add a few percentage points.

What do you like in apartments?

Equity Residential, Sam Zell’s company. Sam brought it public out of the ashes of the savings-and-loan crisis of the early ’90s, and it’s now the 500-pound gorilla of the sector, with a $38 billion portfolio of apartments. It’s the most efficient operator of apartments, with systems and practices that have been polished and honed for many years. Perhaps most importantly, it can access capital more cheaply than anybody else, especially in the debt markets. The stock seems to have some indigestion from the company’s takeover of the Archstone portfolio, but the company doesn’t. Equity Residential and AvalonBay

[AVB] bought Archstone from the Lehman Brothers estate, and it was a big deal. Equity Residential’s portion was about $9 billion.

Where does the company operate?

Equity Residential has transitioned over the past 10 years from being an owner of a national portfolio to one focused on high-quality properties in key gateway markets like New York, Washington, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. It should get an extra one or two percentage points a year of growth because those markets are better—and tougher to build in.

How is it valued?

It’s around $57. Our estimate of NAV is $61. The AFFO yield is 4.3%, which is pretty much on top of the apartment REIT average of 4.4%. So I can buy a best-in-class company at very pedestrian pricing.

By AFFO yield, you are talking about the AFFO in dollars per share divided by the stock price?

That’s right.

The dividend yield is lower than the AFFO yield?

Correct. Most REITs don’t pay out all of their AFFO. Equity Residential’s dividend yield is 3%.

In the office sector, any favorites?

Vornado. Ten or 15 years ago, Vornado was viewed as the best operator in offices. Steve Roth and Mike Fascitelli, the two guys who ran Vornado, generally had the reputation of being the smartest guys in the room. Vornado has made some missteps in recent years, such as its investment in J.C. Penney

. Fascitelli just left, and it’s unclear who’s going to run the company five or 10 years from now. Roth [age 71], who remains chairman, runs it now.

What’s the bull case on Vornado?

While Vornado has had its problems, it hasn’t completely lost its mojo. And Steve Roth is still a very bright guy. Just as importantly, Vornado’s properties are world class. And I like its valuation. It has underperformed the RMS [REIT] index by 13 percentage points over the past 12 months.

How is it valued?

It’s around $87, and we estimate NAV of $89, so it’s another top-tier REIT that trades slightly below NAV. It’s a big Manhattan landlord, particularly around Penn Station.

Is the Penn Station area desirable? It’s not Park Avenue.

It used to be a sort of no-man’s land, but the area is slowly coming into its own. Vornado’s New York portfolio is pretty well positioned. On an AFFO basis, it trades around 4.2%, and that compares with the office REIT average of 3.8%. So on most valuation metrics, it looks pretty cheap, and it’s a high-quality company.

Isn’t Wall Street looking for Vornado to “simplify”?

We think Steve Roth will push forward with some vigor on a simplification strategy. It isn’t necessarily in his nature, but we think he is committed to it. Two years from now, it will be a much easier story for investors to understand and appreciate.

One emerging trend is REITs backed by single-family homes. What do you think?

We’re certainly going to see an awful lot of activity here. The platforms that are being built, and the portfolios being cobbled together are becoming quite large and in some cases pretty impressive. And the sponsorship behind some of them is also impressive.

How many are public now?

The only pure play was Silver Bay Realty Trust

[SBY]. Another, American Residential Properties

[ARPI], just went public. Colony Capital is a well-regarded sponsor, and it just filed for an initial public offering of Colony America Homes. Blackstone currently owns $4 billion worth of houses. They want to get that number above $5 billion, which it will probably be by next year, and then they’ll take it public. And Wayne Hughes, the founder of Public Storage, is also in this business.

How much activity could there be?

Over the course of the next year or two, we expect to see multiple IPOs and many billions of dollars of single-family housing come public as REITs. At this stage, we still are grappling with the economics of it. There is still an awful lot we have to learn, and I think even the sponsors have to learn, because nobody’s been in this business very long.

As best we understand it, you can buy homes in a lot of Sun Belt markets, and elsewhere, and get a fully loaded yield prior to capital expenditures, somewhere in the 6% ballpark. If you throw in a capex reserve, it may take the yield down to 5%.

What are the economics of the business?

They’re uncertain. But if I can buy homes at an all-in yield of close to 5%, and then play the appreciation trade, which given the direction of housing, and given how far it might come back, we think it’s going to be a product that will be well received by the public market.

Do the sponsors want to be in the game for the long term?

These companies are building platforms to operate these properties as continuing businesses. They aren’t designed to play the flip trade. It remains to be seen how successful anybody can be, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these IPOs are successful out of chute.

Thanks, Mike. 

E-mail:
editors@barrons.com

By ANGUS LOTEN

Small brick-and-mortar retailers who recently may have taken Amazon.com for a new and powerful friend are likely thinking twice these days.

Last month, the online shopping giant joined these small stores in their long-running battle to force Web-based retailers to collect out-of-state sales taxes – an exemption that enables many online retailers to charge lower prices, the store owners have argued.

Getty Images

Amazon.com resisted collecting state taxes on remote sales for years.

But as WSJ reported this month, it has recently expressed support for federal proposals to bring order to the way online retailers collect state and local taxes.

Its willingness to get behind the proposals—combined with pressure from states for new sources of tax revenue, and bipartisan efforts in the House and Senate—has given the movement more traction this year.

Whatever warm fuzzy feeling that move may have elicited from small, independent store owners was likely short-lived.

On Dec. 10, Amazon promoted a new “Price Check” mobile phone app by offering shoppers a 5% discount—valid only for that one day—on items they found in brick-and-mortar stores, but purchased online through Amazon instead.

The app enables in-store shoppers to scan or snap a photo of a product. It then immediately compares prices with Amazon’s.

The app is prompting an outcry from small retailers, who say the site is using their independent stores as its own showroom.

By way of background, many small brick-and-mortar retailers have supported recent legislation requiring online retailers to charge state sales taxes on the grounds that customers often come into their stores to see products, but then turn around to buy the same products tax-free online.

More than 7,000 people have signed a petition against the promotion, according to Change.org. The Change.org campaign was launched by Marcus Books owner Jasmine Johnson of Oakland, Calif.

She told the Wall Street Journal in an interview Thursday that Amazon’s promotion will hurt holiday sales at small businesses at a time when they can least afford it.

“The Price Check by Amazon app is primarily intended for customers who are comparing prices in major retail chain stores,” an Amazon spokesman said Thursday. “The goal of the Price Check app is to make it as easy as possible for customers to access product information, pricing information, and customer reviews, just as they would on the Web, while shopping in a major retail chain store,” he said.

The Price Check app features prices from Amazon and its many third-party sellers, he added.

An Amazon spokesperson told the New York Times this week that the promotion was not aimed at small competitors, but rather big box stores.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, had recently likened that to “incentivizing consumers to spy on local shops,” calling it “an attack on Main Street businesses.”

She urged Amazon to cancel the promotion.

Write to Angus Loten at angus.loten@wsj.com