SROA Capital picked up its 12th South Florida self-storage facility for $17.1 million, 205 times more than the previous sale price nearly a half-century ago.
An affiliate of SROA Capital, a West Palm Beach real estate investment firm that owns self-storage company Storage Rentals of America, bought a complex of 18 single-story warehouses at 1547 North Florida Mango Road, records and real estate database Vizzda show.
SROA Capital, led by CEO Benjamin Macfarland, financed the purchase with a $65 million cross-collateralized loan from Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company.
The seller, West Palm Beach Mini Stor-It, paid $83,400 for the 10.2-acre site in 1977, records show. The buildings, 136,256 square feet combined, were completed between 1976 and 1980.
Founded in 2013 by Macfarland, Kohl’s Department Stores co-founder Sidney Kohl and Alliant co-founder James Jenkins, SROA Capital owns 650 self-storage facilities across the nation that total more than 30 million square feet, according to the firm’s website. In South Florida, SROA Capital owns eight self-storage facilities in Palm Beach County, as well as four more in Hollywood, North Miami, Miami and Key West.
The $167 average rental rate for a 5-foot-by-5-foot self-storage unit in South Florida is the second highest in the country, according to a recent StorageCafe report. The tri-county region added 234,522 square feet of self-storage space last year, representing a 2.7 percent increase, year-over-year, the report found. Developers are planning to complete another 348,159 square feet of new self-storage space this year.
Still, the industrial subsector has only seen a few trades in the last year. In October, Ladera Ranch, California-based SmartStop acquired a North Miami self-storage facility completed in 2022 for $30.8 million. And in August, Houston-based Silver Star Properties paid $26.5 million for a Delray Beach self-storage facility as part of a company reorganization to focus only on self-storage and single-tenant properties.