What does a REIT sleeve actually cost to run per year, fund fees and data included

Start with the $25k thing, because it is a real rule pointed at something you are not doing. Pattern day trading rules apply to accounts making several same-day round trips in a week. Buying shares and holding them for years does not trigger it. Most US brokerages have no account minimum and charge nothing to trade listed shares, and many support fractional shares, so a $30k sleeve or a $300 one both work mechanically.

On fees: a broad REIT index fund's expense ratio is the annual slice the fund takes, quoted as a percent of your balance. Broad index REIT funds sit at the low end, often under a tenth of a percent, and narrower sector funds (data centers, for instance) run higher, sometimes several tenths. On $30k, a tenth of a percent is about $30 a year. Buying individual REITs directly costs nothing annually, though you take on the work of watching them.

Research: every listed REIT publishes a quarterly supplemental on its investor relations page for free, and that is where the property-level numbers live. Nareit publishes free sector data. Paid institutional research exists and is priced for institutions.

No license or registration is needed to buy shares for your own account, and there is no insurance to carry. Those belong to direct ownership.

The cost most people miss is tax placement. REIT dividends are largely taxed as ordinary income rather than at qualified-dividend rates, so which account you hold the sleeve in can matter more than the expense ratio. Ask a tax professional about your own situation before you decide where it sits.

Adding to the data point: the supplementals are genuinely enough for a retail-sized sleeve. Same-store NOI growth, lease expiration schedule, debt maturity ladder, development pipeline, all in one PDF, all free. I read four or five per name per year. The paid platforms are for people who need to compare 200 names on a deadline.

Question that follows from this. If a broad index fund costs 0.08% and a sector fund costs 0.4%, and the whole argument is that sector selection is the thing that matters, is the extra 30bp just the cost of doing the strategy at all?

For what it is worth, $30k in a REIT sleeve and $30k toward a down payment on a rural duplex are not the same decision at all. One can be sold on a Tuesday. The other often cannot be sold for six months, and in some markets not at all.