<prompt> Human: I know very little about real estate. Im not even interested in actually doing this, but its something Ive been curious about for a while because I find it to be an interesting notion. I hear so many people say theyre buying a big fancy home as an investment -- so my natural first question is whether its actually necessary to straight-up purchase a home to invest in real estate.Assistant: REITs. Google them...Human: They seem to focus on commercial real estate, which is a bit different from what I was referring to.  <response>: Different REITs are focused on different segments. Look up residential REITs instead.Personally Im invested in Vanguards REIT fund, which holds a number of REITs across various sectors. 16 of that fund is specifically residential REITs and 11 are diversified REITs. 