The Motley Fool ran a piece this week about VICI Properties and its tenant concentration, and the headline number is the kind that makes income investors sit up: roughly 70% of the REIT's income comes from just two companies, Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts.

My first reaction was that this sounds like the setup to a cautionary tale. Anytime one or two customers supply most of a business's revenue, you're holding counterparty risk, plain and simple. If either tenant stumbles, the dividend everyone bought this stock for comes under pressure in a hurry.

But then I sat with it for a minute, and there's a reasonable counterargument worth walking through.

VICI was born in October 2017 out of a debt restructuring with Caesars, where creditors ended up owning the casino operator's real estate instead of paper claims on it. The tenant concentration isn't sloppy management; it's the origin story. These are long triple-net leases, the kind where the tenant pays for taxes, insurance, and maintenance, and in VICI's case the weighted average lease term runs close to four decades once you count renewal options. Casino companies also don't pick up a building and move it to a cheaper state. The real estate is the business.

Still, concentration is concentration. If you own VICI, you're really making two bets at once: that Las Vegas and regional gaming demand stays durable, and that Caesars and MGM keep their balance sheets in order. I've watched enough REITs over the decades to know that a high yield plus a stressed tenant is how dividend cuts happen. The yield looks generous right up until it doesn't.

My practical take is this. If VICI fits your income plan, size it like what it is: a single-sector REIT with real tenant risk, not a bond substitute. A position of a few percent of a diversified portfolio is a different animal from a portfolio that leans on it for the rent money. And if you want real estate exposure with less single-name risk, a broad REIT index fund gets you there without betting on two balance sheets.

The Fool's framing, "here's why I'm not worried," is fair as far as it goes. The leases are genuinely long and the assets are genuinely irreplaceable. I'd soften it to "here's why the risk is understandable." Understandable risk you've sized properly is fine. Understandable risk you've ignored because the yield is pretty is not.

So ask yourself whether you'd still sleep fine if the payout got cut by a third in a bad year. If the answer is no, the position is too big, whatever the lease terms say.

As always, this is my perspective and not professional financial advice. Patience and consistency beat yield-chasing, every time I've checked.