REAL ESTATE Owning property and renting it to farmers, businesses or individuals can be a fine long-term strategy, though timing is everything, as we learned in the middle of the last decade.

But there is plenty about real estate that is nothing like owning stocks, starting with the time it takes to research a purchase. “It’s like being a vegan,” said Michelle Maton, a financial planner with Aequus Wealth Management Resources in Chicago. “You have to educate yourself if you’re going to make that choice.” After all, there is no Morningstar for buildings that are up for sale.

There are a few other things that make real estate at least as risky as owning stocks, even if you may feel better about the underlying asset. It’s not particularly liquid, so you’d better be sure you won’t need to sell quickly. The time it will take you to manage the property counts for something. Then, there are the usual tenant nonpayment and vacancy risks, plus the possibility of permanent economic decline in your region.

There is one upside: If you buy in middle age, you may pay off the mortgage just as your other savings are running out 10 or 15 years after retirement. At that point, the rental income becomes sort of an annuity.

PEER-TO-PEER LENDING In early 2011, I expressed wariness about relatively new services like Lending Club and Prosper that allow individuals to invest money in loans that other people take out. Since then, however, the services have been humming along quite nicely, delivering returns of roughly 7 percent to investors who spread their money in small bits among hundreds of loans to the most creditworthy borrowers.

Alas, regulatory hurdles prevent the companies from taking your money in some states, including Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Michigan and Massachusetts, though residents of New York, California, Illinois and Connecticut are free to try their luck. There are other eligibility requirements, too, based on income or net worth; check the company’s Web sites for more detail.