Education

Unique Times for Commercial Real Estate Banking

Soliciting feedback from our peers in commercial real estate private equity, we confirm our belief that very few transactions are occurring. The headwinds are strong.

Is Seller Financing Creating Buying Opportunities in Value-Add Self Storage?

Based on recent broker feedback, around 50% of all current value-add self storage acquisition opportunities offer the buyer some component of owner financing. This financing structure was unheard of just a couple of years ago when bank financing was...

Why the run-up in residential home prices ends differently this time

Last week, we discussed the reasons behind the near-term slowdown in demand for storage in, What's going on with storage demand?

What's going on with storage demand?

One of the best features of storage is how diverse the demand drivers are, meaning there are a lot of different reasons why people use it. Many of those reasons are largely static in nature; they happen regardless of the state of the economy.

Self Storage Acquisitions Are Heating Up

The Efficient Market Hypothesis (“EFH”) suggests that financial markets efficiently incorporate all available information into asset prices.

The Most Overused and Unreliable Self Storage Underwriting Metric

You sell air conditioners, and your boss points out the following statistics:

The Death of On-Demand Self Storage

Last month the largest on-demand storage company, Clutter, sold itself in a distressed sale to Iron Mountain for $40MM. Clutter, and its predecessors, raised $439MM over the last decade trying to disrupt the traditional storage model by offering...

Self Storage Market Update: Notes from the 2023 SSA Conference

I spent this week at the annual Self Storage Association (SSA) conference meeting with developers, vendors and other industry professionals. Here are some of the highlights:

How Natural Disasters Impact Long Term Self Storage Demand

The recent fires that occurred on Maui were horrific, and a disclaimer to this analysis is that we don’t wish for them to occur, we wish they didn’t, and don’t aim to capitalize off of the hardship of anyone, but I was prompted to think through this...

Hidden Changes in Self Storage Rents: How REIT strategy has shifted

This week, I had the following conversation on X (f/k/a Twitter), which reflects a recent industry shift in REIT pricing strategy: