Index fund or five individual REITs? One of them is lazy in a bad way.

I've got a brokerage account open and about six months of savings I want to put toward real estate exposure without buying a building. The two paths I keep circling are a broad REIT index fund or picking maybe five names myself and holding them.

The case for the index fund is that I don't have to be right about anything. The sector spread comes built in, office drag included, and I never have to read a single earnings call. The guide chapter for this room says the FTSE NAREIT All Equity index has run around 9 percent annualized over two decades, and that's the return I'd be signing up for, more or less, minus fees.

The case against it is also in that chapter. Sector matters enormously. Data centers and senior housing have tailwinds that office does not, and a broad fund holds all of it, which means I'm paying for the challenged parts to get the favored parts. If sector selection is the whole game, buying the average seems like giving up on the game.

The counter to that counter is that I have no ability to judge a management team or a debt maturity ladder yet, so picking five names is just my guesses wearing a suit.

So what actually wins for someone starting out with no analytical edge. I genuinely don't know and I'd rather hear the split than be talked into one side.