BXP vs DEI: Which Is the Better Buy in 2026?

Same yardstick, side by side (as of August 2026). Valuation lined up like this is most meaningful for two names in the same corner of the market, which these are. Figures are approximate; verify before investing.

The metrics above tell you which is the marginally better business. The bigger risk for most people is not picking the slightly worse stock, it is over-concentrating. BXP and DEI share themes, so owning both, or adding either to what you already hold, can quietly push a large share of your portfolio into one bet.

This is the part a generic comparison page cannot answer, because it depends on what you own. Connect your brokerage and Walnut shows your real, combined BXP and DEI exposure, flags overlap with your existing positions, and tells you if adding one would tip you past a concentration you are comfortable with, read-only by default, with your login staying at your broker. Walnut is not an investment adviser.

BXP Inc, which traded as Boston Properties until its 2024 rebrand, is a self-managed real estate investment trust and the largest publicly traded developer, owner, and manager of Class A office properties in the United States. Its portfolio spans roughly 186 commercial properties totaling approximately 53.5 million net rentable square feet, concentrated in six coastal gateway markets: Boston, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Washington DC. The holdings are predominantly premier office and life-sciences workplaces, supplemented by retail, residential, and a hotel, plus a development and redevelopment pipeline. BXP generates revenue chiefly from long-term leases with corporate, law-firm, financial, technology, and life-sciences tenants, and it develops new towers on owned land to add value beyond simply collecting rent.

Full BXP guide

Douglas Emmett, Inc. is a self-administered real estate investment trust that owns and operates one of the most geographically concentrated portfolios in the listed REIT sector. As of mid-2026 it holds about 18.2 million square feet of office space across 75 properties, split between West Los Angeles (roughly 10.2 million square feet across 57 properties), the San Fernando Valley (about 6.8 million square feet across 16 properties) and Honolulu (about 1.2 million square feet across 2 properties). Alongside that sits a multifamily business of roughly 4,410 stabilized apartment units across 15 properties, weighted toward Honolulu (about 2,506 units) and West LA (about 1,904 units), with roughly 1,035 more units in development. Office contributes about 78 percent of annual rent and multifamily about 22 percent, and West LA alone accounts for roughly 65 percent of total rent. The company leases to a deep base of small and mid-sized tenants, many of them law, medical, entertainment and financial firms that want a specific Westside address, and it builds, renovates and converts buildings rather than simply collecting rent on them.

Full DEI guide

Both fit overlapping themes, but they are not interchangeable. The useful comparison is which set of drivers and risks you want exposure to.

• BXP drivers: Flight to quality within office; Rising occupancy and raised FFO guidance.
• DEI drivers: Supply-constrained West LA submarkets; Leasing momentum that the occupancy number hides.

A faster-growing, richer-valued name usually swings harder, so it suits a longer horizon and a higher tolerance for volatility; a steadier, more cash-generative business suits a more conservative or income-minded investor. The honest test is which set of risks you could hold through a drawdown: The dominant risk is the secular shift to hybrid and remote work, which has structurally lowered office space demand and left vacancy elevated in several of BXP's own markets, particularly San Francisco and Washington DC. For DEI, concentration is the first risk and it is deliberate: a single metropolitan area drives most of the rent, so a Los Angeles-specific shock (entertainment production leaving the state, an earthquake, an insurance market that reprices coastal California) hits the whole portfolio at once.

Growth-minded investors who believe the theme has years to run tend to accept the richer multiple for more upside; value-minded investors lean toward the cheaper forward earnings and steadier profile. Pick BXP if you believe its drivers more; DEI if you believe its. Many investors hold both, but since they share themes, that is a concentrated bet, not diversification. Decide deliberately and check overlap. For the full detail, see the BXP and DEI guides.

BXP. For a REIT, funds from operations (FFO) matters more than GAAP EPS because it adds back large non-cash real estate depreciation. On the raised 2026 guidance of roughly $6.90 to $7.04 in FFO per share against a share price near $59, BXP trades at a low-to-mid single-digit multiple of FFO, a discount that reflects the market's caution on office rather than a lack of cash generation. The roughly 4.8 percent dividend yield and a share price well below pre-2020 levels are the clearest signals of how much sector pessimism is embedded in the valuation.

DEI. For a REIT, GAAP earnings per share are close to useless as a valuation input because non-cash depreciation on real estate swamps the result, which is why DEI can guide to a 2026 net loss of $0.20 to $0.16 per share while generating about $56 million of AFFO in a single quarter. On guidance of roughly $1.39 to $1.43 in FFO per share against a share price near $11.66, the stock trades at roughly 8 times FFO, and the annualized $0.76 dividend represents a bit more than half of that FFO. The company ended the quarter with about $355 million of cash and runs G&A at about 4.9 percent of revenue, which it describes as the lowest in its benchmark group.

Headline figures (approximate, July 2026): BXP shows revenue (ttm) ~$3.5 billion, ffo per share (q1 2026) ~$1.59, fy 2026 ffo guidance (midpoint range) ~$6.90 to $7.04, dividend yield (ttm) ~4.8%; DEI shows revenue (ttm) ~$1.01 billion, ffo per fully diluted share (q2 2026) ~$0.37 (flat year over year), fy 2026 ffo guidance ~$1.39 to $1.43 per fully diluted share, fy 2026 office occupancy guidance ~75% to 77%.

BXP and DEI are related but distinct: same themes, different businesses and risks. Neither wins in the abstract; the right pick is whichever thesis you actually believe, sized so you are not over-concentrated in one theme. Walnut can show your combined BXP and DEI exposure against your real portfolio. It is not an investment adviser.