I love bargain stocks, especially when they're hitting 52-week lows. Still, it can be instructive to also look at stocks that are riding high.

For one thing, they can make good sell candidates. More optimistically, we may be able to find a few companies that can continue their upward climbs.

In this series, I'll be searching industry by industry for stocks reaching 52-week highs. That way, we'll be able to make a few quick comparisons among semi-related companies.

There are 24 industry groups as defined by the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS). Real estate is one of them.

Below are the top seven companies in this space (by market cap) that are within spitting distance of their 52-week highs.

Company

Recent Price

52-Week Low

52-Week High

Price-to-Book Ratio

Simon Property Group (NYSE: SPG)

$97.90

$64.20

$99.46

6.3
Public Storage (NYSE: PSA)

$102.29

$71.30

$104.35

3.3
Vornado Realty Trust (NYSE: VNO)

$91.08

$56.50

$91.67

3.1
Equity Residential (NYSE: EQR)

$50.49

$27.50

$52.20

3.1
Boston Properties (NYSE: BXP)

$90.73

$57.20

$91.45

2.8
HCP (NYSE: HCP)

$37.10

$26.70

$38.05

1.9
Annaly Capital (NYSE: NLY)

$18.22

$14.10

$18.99

1.1

Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's; and Yahoo! Finance.

Each company here is trading at a significant premium to its price-to-book ratio -- except for dividend darling Annaly Capital. If you're unfamiliar with this 15.2%-yield REIT, check out Ilan Moscovitz's breakdown.   

Contrast these price-to-books with what we found on the 52-week-lows list. A few companies there are trading below book value.

If you're interested in reading more about these stocks, add them to My Watchlist to find all of our Foolish analysis on them.