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“When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.”

— Warren Buffett

The Warren Buffett investment philosophy calls for a long-term investment horizon, where a two-decade holding period, or even longer, would fit right into the strategy. How would such a strategy have worked out for an investment into Healthpeak Properties Inc (NYSE: DOC)? Today, we examine the outcome of a two-decade investment into the stock back in 2005.

Start date: 12/19/2005
$10,000

12/19/2005
  $18,855

12/18/2025
End date: 12/18/2025
Start price/share: $26.31
End price/share: $16.41
Starting shares: 380.08
Ending shares: 1,149.49
Dividends reinvested/share: $33.86
Total return: 88.63%
Average annual return: 3.22%
Starting investment: $10,000.00
Ending investment: $18,855.06

The above analysis shows the two-decade investment result worked out as follows, with an annualized rate of return of 3.22%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $18,855.06 today (as of 12/18/2025). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 88.63% (something to think about: how might DOC shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Notice that Healthpeak Properties Inc paid investors a total of $33.86/share in dividends over the 20 holding period, marking a second component of the total return beyond share price change alone. Much like watering a tree, reinvesting dividends can help an investment to grow over time — for the above calculations we assume dividend reinvestment (and for this exercise the closing price on ex-date is used for the reinvestment of a given dividend).

Based upon the most recent annualized dividend rate of 1.22004/share, we calculate that DOC has a current yield of approximately 7.43%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.22004 against the original $26.31/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 28.24%.

Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“Never test the depth of a river with both feet.” — Warren Buffett