Safehold Stock: Dividend, Book Value and Ground Lease Risk

Name and ticker: what is Safehold in 2026

Safehold Inc. trades on the NYSE as SAFE. It is the legal successor of iStar Inc.: on March 31, 2023, the old Safehold merged into iStar, which kept the surviving corporation and took the name Safehold. That is why the SEC identifier for today's Safehold, CIK 1095651, shows iStar's older filing history. Nothing about the name or ticker changed in 2026. What did change is on the operating side. On January 1, 2026, two hotels reverted to the company after a master lease expired, creating a second reportable segment, Hotel Operations. On August 1, 2026, the company moved its executive offices to One Penn Plaza in New York.

The dividend: Safehold reports GAAP earnings, not FFO

Most listed REITs publish FFO or AFFO and show a payout ratio. Safehold does not. We searched every saved filing and earnings document for “FFO”, “AFFO” and “funds from operations” and found none. The company's own headline measures are revenue, GAAP net income and earnings per share, plus operating cash flow and estimated UCA. So a fair payout ratio has to be built from those.

The dividend is $0.177 each quarter, so the ratio moves only with earnings. Earnings per share grew 8% from $0.39 to $0.42 between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026 while revenue rose 22%. Interest expense also rose: $55.188 million in Q2 2026 against $51.265 million a year earlier, and 48.1% of Q2 revenue (our arithmetic). First-half 2026 earnings per share were $0.82 against $0.80, and the first-half 2025 figure was $0.83 before a $1.9 million non-recurring loss.

The 10-K carries the standard warning: “Stockholders of the Company have no contractual or other legal right to dividends that have not been declared by our board of directors.” Safehold is a REIT, so it must distribute at least 90% of REIT taxable income, which can differ from GAAP income.

Cash flow: where the dividend is tight

GAAP earnings include non-cash income. Most of the portfolio is accounted for as sales-type leases, and the company's own yield table shows the gap: an annualized cash yield of 3.8%, an annualized yield of 5.5% and an economic yield of 6.0% on the core ground lease portfolio at June 30, 2026. Cash flow shows the difference more directly.

Operating cash flow improved a great deal from 2023, but it has not exceeded dividends over a full year in the periods above. The first half of 2026 fell against the first half of 2025. The 10-Q says the decrease was due primarily to “an increase of cash payments for debt service and costs associated with two hotels that we became responsible for operating on January 1, 2026”. In the same six months, investing cash flow was minus $208.6 million and financing cash flow was plus $177.9 million, so growth was funded by borrowing and by partner capital, not by retained cash.

In Q2 2026 the two hotels produced $15.937 million of revenue and $13.932 million of expenses. That is a margin of about $2.0 million before interest and corporate costs (our arithmetic), which is small next to the $76.902 million of interest income from sales-type leases.

Equity per share, UCA and the buyback

On June 30, 2026, Safehold Inc. shareholders' equity was $2,439.146 million on 71.057 million shares, or $34.33 per share (our arithmetic). The same calculation gives $33.81 on March 31 and $33.56 on December 31, 2025. This is GAAP carrying value, not a market value, and it excludes noncontrolling interests.

UCA is the company's estimate of the combined value of land and buildings in excess of what it paid for the ground leases. At June 30, 2026, the estimated combined property value was $16.676 billion and ground lease cost was $6.906 billion. CBRE values each property about every 12 months and no less often than every 24, on a hypothetical basis: the value as if the ground lease did not exist and the building were fully leased at market. Our arithmetic gives $137.50 of UCA per share, but the company writes: “There can be no assurance that we will realize any incremental value from the UCA in our owned residual portfolio”. Realization is tied to lease expirations that are decades away, and several tenants hold purchase or preemptive rights.

Repurchases are the company's own read on price. In Q2 2026 it bought 279,531 shares at $15.02 in April, 282,881 at $14.85 in May and 287,928 at $15.63 in June. For the first half it repurchased 1.1 million shares for $16.3 million, an average $15.00 including fees; after June 30 it bought 0.2 million more at $16.40. At those prices the $0.708 dividend is a yield of 4.7% and 4.3% (our arithmetic), and equity per share is 2.29 times the first-half average price. These are not market quotes. $33.7 million of the $50 million authorization remained at June 30, and no shares had been sold under the $300 million at-the-market program.

Debt: nothing due until 2027, then 2029

Total debt principal was $4,708.770 million at June 30, 2026, of which $3.6 billion was fixed and $1.1 billion floating. The company's debt to equity ratio was 2.01 times and the effective interest rate on debt was 4.4%. Ratings are A3 at Moody's, A- at Fitch and A- at S&P, all stable.

In June 2026 the operating company issued $225 million of 6.615% senior notes due August 2056. The cash coupon starts at 4.00% and steps up; the difference to 6.615% accrues and is added to principal, which defers cash interest rather than removing it. The company's sensitivity table estimates that a 100 basis point rise in rates would reduce annual net income by $5.216 million, about $0.07 per share (our arithmetic), because $1.1 billion of debt floats.

Liquidity was $1.4 billion in cash and undrawn revolver, against $188.5 million of unfunded ground lease commitments and $143.8 million of performance-based commitments.

Concentration: Manhattan, office and two disputes

Manhattan was 21% of ground lease gross book value at June 30, 2026 and the New York metro area 28%. By property type, office was 39% of gross book value, multifamily 44%, hotels 9%, life science 6% and mixed use 2%. Office has the weakest cushion in the company's own table.

Rent coverage is the property's net operating income divided by the ground rent, and GLTV is the company's loan-to-value-style measure of its ground lease cost against combined property value. Both are company estimates built on tenant-reported numbers.

The New York office dispute is the clearest test. The tenant of the 135 West 50th Street property failed to pay property taxes, defaulted on a forbearance agreement and received a termination notice on May 11, 2026. The 10-Q states that “a temporary restraining order has been granted on our lease termination efforts”. It was entered June 4, 2026, and a motion for a preliminary injunction and Safehold's motion to modify the order were pending when the 10-Q was filed. The company says it believes its claims are meritorious but gives “no assurances” it will prevail.

The second dispute concerns the Park Hotels master lease. On October 22, 2025, Safehold sent the tenant a termination notice for all five hotels and sued in the Delaware Court of Chancery; the tenant disputes it and has filed counterclaims. Two of the original five hotels reverted to Safehold at the end of 2025 and are now operated by it. The 10-Q reports H1 2026 percentage rent of $4.5 million against $5.2 million.

What changed in the latest quarter

• Q2 2026 results (reported July 30, 2026): revenue $114.6 million, net income to common $30.2 million, EPS $0.42; $150 million of ground lease originations, all seven in multifamily.
• Brookfield joint venture (June 2026): Brookfield bought a 49% interest in seven contributed ground leases at a gross valuation of $348 million, for $170.5 million in cash. The assets produce about $14 million of annual ground rent. Safehold keeps control, consolidates the venture and holds call options starting after year seven.
• June 2026 notes: $225 million due 2056, described above.
• September 29, 2026 (Form 8-K, filed October 2): Safehold extended the maturity of the $115.0 million Star Holdings term loan by a year to March 31, 2029 and received a $2.4 million extension fee. Star Holdings owned about 19.0% of Safehold's common stock at June 30, 2026, so its funding position matters to Safehold holders.

What a holder can do with this

This page is a reading of public documents, not a recommendation. A holder tracking the dividend can keep three questions open: whether operating cash flow stays at or above the roughly $26 million paid out every half-year, whether the New York and Park Hotels cases are resolved, and whether the UCA estimate keeps moving up when properties are revalued. Safehold also differs from most income stocks on one point: its dividend has been constant for years, so the useful signal is coverage, not growth.

There are dated items to watch:

• The Q3 2026 10-Q. It is not on EDGAR as of October 19, 2026 and we found no announced date in the filings reviewed. The pattern has been an earnings 8-K the day before the 10-Q: November 5 and 6 in 2025, April 30 and May 1 in 2026, and July 30 and 31 in 2026.
• The 135 West 50th Street rulings, which were pending at the 10-Q date.
• The Q4 2026 dividend declaration. The Q3 dividend of $0.177 was declared on September 15, 2026; the board must declare each quarter's dividend.

For readers comparing a listed company with a non-traded vehicle, our guide to listed and non-traded REITs covers the structural differences, and why non-traded REITs list at a discount explains what a net asset value does and does not tell you. For an office-exposure comparison, see office REIT dividends, occupancy and debt and the BXP stock page. A ground lease is a net lease at its core, so real triple net lease clauses are relevant background. A different net-lease payout is in the NNN REIT stock page.

If this one company is a large part of your income, or you are weighing a listed ground lease REIT against a private real estate vehicle for the same money, a conversation with a qualified adviser about how the position fits with the rest of your holdings may be worth having.

This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: Safehold Inc. Form 10-Q for June 30, 2026, Form 10-Q for March 31, 2026, Form 10-K for 2025, July 30, 2026 earnings release and presentation, July 30, 2026 UCA Form 8-K, April 30, 2026 earnings presentation, February 11, 2026 earnings documents, November 5, 2025 earnings presentation, June 2026 Brookfield joint venture 8-K, June 2026 senior notes 8-K, October 2, 2026 Star Holdings 8-K and the SEC EDGAR filing list for CIK 1095651. Primary-source review cutoff: October 19, 2026. Computed ratios are labeled “our arithmetic”; sources are saved with the downloadable research dataset.