...I am looking to Asia/China. It's where the future is...

if a man hires a house and furniture belonging to somebody else, the services he obtains from them enter into the national dividend, as we are here provisionally defining it, but, if he receives the house and furniture as a gift and continues to occupy it, they do so no longer. Again, if a farmer sells the produce of his farm and buys the food he needs for his family in the market, a considerable amount of produce enters into the national dividend which would cease to enter into it if, instead of buying things in the market, he held back part of his own meat and vegetables and consumed them on the farm. Again, the philanthropic work done by unpaid organiser, Church workers and Sunday school teachers, the scientific work of disinterested experimenters, and the political work of many among the leisured classes, which at present do not enter or, when there is a nominal payment, enter at much less than their real worth, into the national dividend, would enter into it if those people undertook to pay salaries to one another. Thus, for example, the Act providing for the payment of members of Parliament increased the national dividend by services valued at some £250,000. Yet again, the services rendered by women enter into the dividend when they are rendered in exchange for wages, whether in the factory or in the home, but do not enter into it when they are rendered by mothers and wives gratuitously to their own families. Thus, if a man marries his housekeeper or his cook, the national dividend is diminished. These things are paradoxes. It is a paradox also that, when Poor Law or Factory Regulations divert women workers from factory work or paid home-work to unpaid home-work, in attendance on their children, preparation of the family meals, repair of the family clothes, thoughtful expenditure of housekeeping money, and so on, the national dividend, on our definition, suffers a loss against which there is to be set no compensating gain. It is a paradox, lastly, that the frequent desecration of natural beauty through the hunt for coal or gold, or through the more blatant forms of commercial advertisement, must, on our definition, leave the national dividend intact, though, if it had been practicable, as it is in some exceptional circumstances, to make a charge for viewing scenery, it would not have done so

If you open and read this, there is an image of the guy that wrote this blog and he looks like he may have been about 15 years old when REITS crashed in 2007-2009, so I don't think he understands the pain REIT investors felt at that time. I don't know how he can make this summary statement below. If I look at the Vanguard ETF for REITS, VNQ, it lost 70%+ peak to trough during the great recession. Would that be considered a bond alternative with less risk for retirees?

REITs are a viable alternative to retirees and other income investors who desire greater income without having to take significantly more risk.

So is it time to trade self-storage reits for storage-of-self reits?