This entry treats self-storage at capital scale: deploying significant capital into storage facility development, acquisition, and portfolio aggregation, often through funds or large operating platforms, to earn returns from the storage income and the increased value of the portfolio.
Log in to followSmall win, beginner-sized, but it's the first time in a year of poking at this that I did something deliberate and it worked. I was looking at two storage funds because everyone k…
I've got two active deals in other property types and I'm looking at storage for the first time, and every summary I read says the frozen housing market is suppressing storage dem…
Someone I trust forwarded me a deck for a self-storage fund. Minimum is $50k, which is most of what I have set aside, so I want to understand it before I do anything. The fees I c…
I want this one written down because it's the kind of mistake that doesn't feel like a mistake while it's happening. Early 2023 I committed $40k to a storage fund. Guy I trust in…
Went through a portfolio memo last week that priced 14 facilities at a blended cap and then, on page 31, asserted a 75 basis point compression on exit "reflecting portfolio scale.…
I've got a construction background and I'm working the investing side of a development-vs-buy question that keeps flipping on me depending on which line I touch. Site in a seconda…
Reading the LPA and PPM on a $180m storage aggregation vehicle. Stated plan is 22 to 26 facilities across three secondary metros, roughly 60/40 acquisition to development, five ye…
I've spent the last four months writing capex scopes across a group of storage facilities for an owner who is aggregating toward twenty and is now at the decision everyone told hi…
This one closed out in the spring and I've had a few months to look at it straight. 2022, I put $85k into a nine-facility aggregation vehicle buying in small markets, populations…
I committed $200k in 2022 to a storage fund that pitched itself as 70% stabilized acquisitions, 30% ground-up. The stabilized side has been fine, boring, roughly what the deck sai…
Numbers first, then the part that nearly killed it. Six-facility portfolio, secondary markets in one state, bought as two separate deals about seven months apart. Total basis $23.…
The sponsor is a storage operator I've never worked with. Three ground-up facilities, all climate controlled, roughly 78,000 net rentable square feet each. Total cost $41M, constr…
Been building this model for a month and I want to write down where it landed before I talk myself out of it. Direct path. Two existing facilities in the same secondary market, 62…
Sixteen facilities, aggregation strategy, I'm four quarters in as an LP. Latest report: Same-store revenue down 1.8% year over year. Physical occupancy 89.4%, was 91.2%. In-place…
I've now sat through three storage pitches this year and every one of them used the same word. Defensive. Demand comes from life events, people move, people divorce, people die, p…
Still no deal of my own. But this worked, so here it is. Last winter I started tracking published street rates weekly across 40 facilities in three submarkets, unit by unit for th…
I've been reading two fund decks side by side and they describe the same asset class in ways that barely overlap. One says the money comes from the rent. Facilities collect monthl…
Reading a fund deck for a storage portfolio and there's a revenue line called tenant protection plan income at just under 8 percent of total revenue. There's a footnote saying it'…
I own six acres on a state highway just outside a town of about 19,000. Bought it three years ago to hold. Zoned commercial, water and power at the road, sewer is not, there's a s…
Platform I've been an LP in since 2021 just closed a portfolio refi. 14 of the 19 facilities went into a single loan, $118M, they're calling it about 62% of appraised value. Cash-…