Storage exposure without operating: REIT shares, a single asset LP, or a small facility with third party management

There are three ways to own self storage without running it, and they turn out to be three different bets wearing the same name. Public REIT shares give an investor daily liquidity, a professional operating platform, and diversification across hundreds of facilities and dozens of markets. What gets given up is any market selection. The recovery favors low supply markets with improving housing conditions, and a national platform averages those together with the oversupplied ones. There is also equity market volatility layered onto an asset chosen partly for being defensive. A single asset LP position lets an investor pick the market and the sponsor, and the returns are not marked to a stock exchange every day. The cost is illiquidity that cannot be priced properly, dependence on one sponsor's judgment, and a fee arrangement that takes a cut before any distribution arrives. Whether a given position is even offered to someone in a particular situation depends on securities rules that a lawyer needs to review, so that is not something to sort out from a forum. Buying a small facility outright and putting third party management on it gives control of the asset and the market choice, plus depreciation held directly. The problem is that management fees on small facilities eat more than they should, and the owner is still the one on the hook for the roof and the delinquency process. Capital is available and selective right now, which reads 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, though it is worth being honest about how much of that preference is really about wanting the work.