Blackstone is investing in industrial outdoor storage, a real estate niche that stands to grow thanks to tariffs and e-commerce growth.
The private equity giant has originated a $231 million loan to Jadian Capital for its portfolio of 43 industrial outdoor storage properties. JLL brokered the financing.
The Jadian portfolio spans 13 states, with Colorado, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey and Texas among them. More than half of the acreage is in Sunbelt states, with about 37% in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, according to a release from JLL.
Tenants in the financed properties include United Rentals, Waste Management, Ryder and ABF Freight. Jadian says it aims to grow its portfolio in outdoor storage to $2 billion.
Industrial outdoor storage is a relatively new term in real estate, used to describe typically open-air storage areas for trucks, construction equipment or other industrial assets. Properties often have few building improvements.
Growing demand for the asset class has been driven in part by the e-commerce boom, said Daniel Schuchinsky, managing director at Jadian Capital. But trends like reshoring, which is the goal of President Trump’s tariffs on foreign imports, can also increase demand for outdoor storage.
At the same time, barriers to growing supply can similarly drive up prices. Not only can it be difficult to find contiguous acreage to build new storage sites, zoning laws in certain regions prohibit the asset class, Schuchinsky said.
Even cities and towns that are typically friendly to industrial real estate may look down on outdoor storage when it can’t tout job creation numbers, said Christopher Todd, senior managing director of industrial services at NAI James E. Hanson. Properties typically fetch higher prices in older industrial real estate markets like New Jersey, where existing stock wasn’t built with modern parking and storage needs in mind, he said.
Much of the existing stock of industrial outdoor storage is in the hands of local owners, both Todd and Schuchinsky said. But that may be beginning to change.
“The asset class is becoming more and more institutionalized,” Todd said. “So you have the Blackstones of the world coming in and investing real money into it.”
Read more
