3 Brilliant Dividend Stocks to Buy Now and Hold for the Long Term

Globe and Mail

7 days ago

Key Points
Federal Realty is a reliable Dividend King that's attractively priced.
Visa is expensive, but has an attractive growth story to offer.
Bank of Nova Scotia is a Canadian banking giant with a solid turnaround plan.
10 stocks we like better than Visa ›
Dividend stocks come in all shapes and sizes, so there's no one-size-fits-all approach that works for everyone. That's actually good news, since every investor is unique. If you are looking for dividend stocks to buy, you'll want to examine Federal Realty (NYSE: FRT), Visa (NYSE: V), and Bank of Nova Scotia (NYSE: BNS). Here's why these three options could be brilliant stocks to buy and hold for the long term (for the right investor).
1. Federal Realty is boring and reliable
Federal Realty is a retail-focused real estate investment trust (REIT). It owns strip malls and mixed-use developments that are centered around retail assets. It isn't the biggest retail REIT, owning only around 100 properties. However, those properties are large and very well located, with higher average populations and income than the REIT's closest peers.
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One of the key skills that Federal Realty possesses is on the development and redevelopment front. In fact, it is a fairly active portfolio manager, buying assets that need some love, fixing them up to increase their value and rent-generating capacity, and then selling if a good price can be had. The process is then repeated. This model has worked very well over time, noting that Federal Realty is the only REIT to have achieved Dividend King status.
Now add in an attractive 4.6% dividend yield, which is well above the 1.3% yield of the S&P 500 index (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) and the 4.1% yield of the average REIT. If you are looking for a large and reliable income stream, Federal Realty should be on your radar today.
2. Visa is a dividend growth machine
Not every dividend investor is looking for a big yield; some are looking for dividend growth. That's where Visa excels, noting that its annualized dividend growth rate over the past decade was a shockingly impressive 17%. More recent growth has been a bit slower, but the dividend growth rates over the one-, three-, and five-year periods are all over 10%. These are the kind of stats that dividend growth investors should love.
Visa is a payment processor. It collects small fees for facilitating billions of transactions with cards that carry its logo. No single fee is very large, but over the vast number of transactions it handles, the figures add up. And, despite its already impressive scale, the business is still growing. In the second quarter of 2025, Visa processed 9% more transactions than it did a year ago, leading to a 9% jump in revenues and a 10% increase in adjusted earnings.
The one problem with Visa stock is that investors are well aware of how attractive the business is today, and the stock's price-to-sales and price-to-earnings ratios are above their five-year averages. That said, neither of these metrics is shockingly above its average, so more aggressive investors focused on dividend growth (the dividend yield is a tiny 0.7% or so) still might want to dive in here, noting that the world continues to move toward digital and card payments.
3. Bank of Nova Scotia is a low-risk and high-yield turnaround
Bank of Nova Scotia, which normally just gets shortened to Scotiabank, is one of the largest banks in Canada. Canada has strict banking regulations that have, effectively, created protected industry positions for the country's largest banks. And that regulation has generally left the largest banks, like Scotiabank, with a conservative ethos.
That's the backdrop for a stock that is offering up an attractively high 5.7% yield. The dividend, meanwhile, has been paid every year since 1833. This is a reliable dividend stock, but it isn't exactly running on all cylinders today.
Scotiabank attempted to differentiate itself by focusing on Central and South America as it looked to expand beyond its Canadian borders. That didn't work out as well as hoped, and it is now revamping its approach, exiting weaker markets, emphasizing stronger markets, and including the U.S. in the mix to a greater degree. This effort is ongoing, making Scotiabank a turnaround story, but it seems to be achieving decent success. Notably, dividend growth was put on pause in 2024, but has resumed again in 2025.
Dividend options for all sorts of investors
The dividend stocks on this list probably won't all be attractive to the same investor. Investors looking for a boring and reliable high yield will likely appreciate Federal Realty. Dividend growth investors should focus on Visa. And turnaround lovers will like Bank of Nova Scotia.
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