It is a common occurrence: old fads come back to haunt us, the way bell bottoms of the 1960s came back as flare and boot-cut jeans in the 1990s. Even in the field of real estate, old trends that have been deemed “unfashionable” are coming back as the in thing. Making its comeback are -modest, worry-free property investments that our grandparents once knew as “net lease deals”.

The way our grandparents worked the real estate market was that they derived steady income by purchasing retail or office buildings then renting them out to ultra-creditworthy single tenants signing long-term leases – tenants like Walgreens, McDonald’s, or the U.S. Postal Service. The tenants would have to take care of everything else from maintenance, utilities and repair – so if a new roof is needed or a toilet is to be fixed, the tenant will have to shell out cash. All the lessor has to do is sit back and count his money.

Net lease deals are a steady and dependable source of income but it is not a fancy business and it not a lucrative form of business – it is to the real estate what blue chip is to the stock market. Since it is seen as conservative, it was easily deemed as “for the unambitious” and went out of style in this fast-paced real estate era. But the real estate market is not exactly in the go-go pace at the moment, and investors prefer to go back to laid back real estate style of the old.

When the speculative bubbles collapsed and the credit markets dried up, investors started looking at a safer way of spending money and net lease deals are the answer. Seeking safety and simplicity, investors are now looking at getting the best properties – but they have added a new twist by branching out from ultra-creditworthy tenants to those properties with solid yet less creditworthy tenants, yielding higher cap rates.

The comeback of net lease deals of the more speculative nature have sapped the market of “A-plus” properties, says Chicago-based boutique investment real estate service firm Boulder Group.