Blackstone Group is buying Simply Self Storage from Brookfield Asset Management for about $1.2 billion, Bloomberg reported.
Brookfield bought the storage company in 2016 and has more than doubled its footprint; it now has more than 8 million square feet of space across the U.S. It started seeking buyers for the company earlier this year.
With this deal, Blackstone, which owns $300 million worth of self-storage facilities, would become the country’s third-largest owner of storage not listed on a stock exchange, according to Bloomberg.
The sale is set to be finalized by the end of the year.
The self-storage sector has fared better than the other real estate investment trust sectors in the pandemic, as economic changes tend to create demand for self-storage.
[Bloomberg] — Akiko Matsuda