The self-storage sector in the United States has added 547 million square feet over the last decade to reach about two billion square feet total nationwide, according to data released in September by business intelligence platform Yardi Matrix.
That growth is concentrated in cities where multifamily construction, specifically in regions where apartment living grew while home ownership declined.
The Dallas suburb of Frisco presents a good example. Frisco’s rentership rate soared over the last ten years from 25 percent to 33.5 percent as developers stepped in to meet the city’s growing housing demand. Smaller units dominated the boom, with studios and one-bedroom apartments making up 53 percent of multifamily completions nationwide since 2015, according to Yardi data.
With new apartments now averaging about 75 square feet smaller than those built in the early 2000s, storage unit rentals have also grown in popularity.
“Self storage has quietly become the backbone of this new reality,” Victor Maghear, an analyst at StorageCafe, said in a statement. “Beyond traditional uses like moving or storing the forgotten, its primary users today are those who simply lack space at home.”
In cities where the multifamily inventory has grown by 50 percent since 1985, self-storage space has increased even faster, growing on average by over 80 percent during the same period, according to StorageCafe’s analysis of data covering 40 years in the 130 largest U.S. cities.
The correlation is most pronounced in the Sun Belt, particularly Texas. The state’s major metros — including Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas — lead the nation in both apartment deliveries and self-storage construction.
Houston has added over 241,000 new apartments and 20 million square feet of self-storage since 1985, while San Antonio has added 135,000 apartments and some 13 million square feet of self-storage space during the same period, according to the data.
Read more
