Storage exposure without operating: REIT shares, a single-asset LP, or just buy a small facility and hire it out

I've been pulling apart the three ways to own storage without running it, and they turn out to be three different bets wearing the same name.

Public REIT shares give me daily liquidity, a professional operating platform, and diversification across hundreds of facilities and dozens of markets. What I give up is any market selection. The guide is clear that the recovery favors low-supply markets with improving housing conditions, and a national platform averages those together with the oversupplied ones. I also get equity market volatility on an asset I chose partly for being defensive.

A single-asset LP position lets me pick the market and the sponsor, and the returns aren't marked to a stock exchange every day. The cost is illiquidity I can't price properly, dependence on one sponsor's judgment, and a fee arrangement that takes a cut before I see anything. Whether a given position is even offered to someone in my situation depends on securities rules that a lawyer needs to look at, so that's not something I'd sort out from a forum.

Buying a small facility outright and putting third-party management on it gives me control of the asset and the market choice, plus depreciation I own directly. The problem is that management fees on small facilities eat more than they should, and I'm still the one on the hook for the roof and the delinquency process.

Capital is available and selective right now, which I read as favoring whoever can move on the specific asset rather than whoever wants sector exposure generally. That argues against the REIT and for the other two. But I might be talking myself into work.