(MONEY Magazine) – When Rockefeller Center Properties first sold stock to the public in 1985, analysts heralded the home of Radio City's Rockettes as a yield play with a real estate kicker -- a share in the Rockefeller family's Manhattan jewel. Beautiful theory, ugly reality. While the company has raised its annual dividend from $1.76 to $1.88, the stock has sunk from $20 to $17, as New York City's real estate market went limp. Analysts, however, see better days ahead. ''The stock now offers high income and potential long-term capital appreciation,'' says Dean Witter's Steven MacNamara. Rock Center chairman David Rockefeller appears to agree: in September he paid $861,024 for 50,000 shares to add to the 35,000 he already owned. News accounts last year said that the Japanese bought Rockefeller Center. The deal actually is more complex than that. Mitsubishi Estate Co. paid $846 million for 51% of the Rockefeller Group, which owns the 12 original buildings of the Center as well as two others nearby. But Rockefeller Center Properties, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange, is a real estate investment trust that holds a mortgage on the 12 original buildings. In the year 2000, this mortgage will convert into a 71.5% ownership stake in those buildings. To avoid losing control, the Japanese are likely to buy as much as half the stock of Rockefeller Center Properties before 2000, analysts say. (The Time Inc. Magazine Co., the publisher of MONEY, is a Rockefeller Center tenant but holds no equity.) Analysts' assessment of what Japanese buying might mean: investors may earn a 10.8% yield (40% of which is a tax-deferred return of capital). And based on a target price of $33 a share by 2000, they could get an annual average total return of 17.7% over the next 10 years. -- J.E.G.

CHART: Rockefeller Center Properties, Inc.

Recent price $17 52-week ratio $22 to $15

Est. earnings per share P/E ratio 1990 $1.021 6.6 1991 $1.00 17.0