Internal versus external REIT managers
There are generally two approaches to REIT management: internal and external. An internal management team manages the properties and can help make decisions about purchases and sales, focusing solely on the REIT they're a part of. However, this can come at a cost because internal managers are often tightly focused on their own REIT and can be blind to other ways to manage REITs or other ways to perform business functions.
External REIT managers, on the other hand, tend to manage multiple REITs and their properties, which means they have more exposure to how different REITs are run, their challenges, and their successes. So they may have more experience to work from. Still, they can offer a more generic approach to REIT management since they're still on the outside looking in.