Well, at least you put the REIT in your Roth! It's ordinary income anywhere else on those dividends.
"The average annualized total return for the S&P 500 index over the past 90 years is 9.8 percent."
THAT SAID, you can't cherry pick one year or two years that you're holding an investment and compare that to the S&P500's long-term average. Google how the market is doing in a given year and compare it to your REIT in the last (whatever period) and you'll notice a big difference, probably.
Part of that is that we have a very, very long-running bull market. REITs have not been the recent darlings because interest rates are going up, and people are hyperventilating about pricing that in (pushing the prices down). They're similarly panicked about the downtrend in retail, which many REITs are dependent on.
Over the long term, the REIT's large dividend and small capital appreciation are rarely as good as a total-market index return like you get from VTSAX, but an REIT CAN BE a nice (smaller!) piece of your portfolio.
My emergency fund is credit cards. I can cashflow any emergency. If I can't, credit card. If even that weren't enough? No idea. I've never badly needed 50k in under 2 days. The most obvious thing for an e-fund is the price of a somewhat major repair if you use a local mechanic, which is probably cheaper, and may not take credit cards. Other than that, it's not really something I worry about, but people have very different mileage on what an e-fund should have in it.