This pair of REITs steadily raised their dividend payouts for over a decade.You don't need to be an income-seeking investor to appreciate dividend-paying stocks. That's because businesses that commit to returning profits to shareholders have a tendency to outperform businesses that don't.The average dividend-paying stock in the benchmark S&P 500 index produced a 9.2% annualized return over the 50-year period ended 2024. Stocks in the same index that didn't pay dividends produced a disappointing 4.3% average ...