A REIT trustee holds the trust's property and cash for the unit holders and supervises the REIT manager against the trust deed.

It is a separate licence because the assets are buildings: title, valuation and development risk are a different supervisory job from watching a securities portfolio.

Appointed by the REIT. You meet the name in the prospectus and in the annual report, not in anything you sign.

If you hold REIT units it is worth reading what the trustee reports rather than only what the manager does. The manager writes the optimistic half of an annual report; the trustee's statement is the part obliged to say whether the rules were followed.

None of its own, and its fee is a charge on the trust before distributions — so, like a custodian's, it is already inside the distribution figure a REIT reports.

The thing it protects against is specific: a manager valuing its own buildings, or selling one to a related party at a price nobody checked.