What ECRI means on a storage operating statement, and whether 4.5 percent monthly move-out is normal

Here is a scenario worth walking through for anyone reading their first storage statement. Take a 240 unit facility where the revenue line grows 6 percent year over year while unit count and occupancy are both flat. The broker calls that ECRI and moves on as if everyone knows the term. Work backward. If doors and occupancy do not move and revenue does, it is rate. Existing customers paying more. The rent roll confirms it: tenants who moved in during 2022 are paying about 19 percent more now than their move-in rate, and there are three or four increase dates visible per tenant. That is what existing customer rate increases look like on paper, rent raised on tenants already in place rather than street rate chased on new move-ins. The part the room should work through is the limits. Can an operator do that every six months forever? Is there a point where the tenant walks and the facility has traded a filled unit for a vacant one plus a cleanup? The statement in this scenario shows move-outs at roughly 4.5 percent of units per month, and a first time buyer has no baseline for that. And if the whole revenue growth story on a facility is rate increases on a captive base, what happens to that story when the next buyer has already had the increases taken? A buyer in that position is being shown the last owner's work rather than something they get to repeat. So the question worth settling first: is 4.5 percent monthly move-out normal for this asset class, or alarming?