On-demand self-storage start-up Clutter has broken into real estate, picking up a four-warehouse portfolio in New York for $152 million, the firm said.
The properties are in Brooklyn, Long Island City, White Plains and Yonkers, and the portfolio totals about 500,000 square feet, according to Clutter. They were formerly Storage Fox properties, and Clutter plans to re-brand the buildings by November.
Ari Mir, co-founder and CEO of Clutter, said in an interview that company was drawn to the portfolio because the properties are new and operational. The addresses of the warehouses are: 280 Fullerton Avenue, Yonkers; 5601 Foster Avenue, Brooklyn; 1 Holland Avenue, White Plains; and 3046 Northern Boulevard, Long Island City.
The New York deal comes several months after Clutter acquired competitor Omni for an undisclosed sum. Clutter plans to snap up more self-storage businesses and their properties, too, and use the real estate to incorporate other services — like the ability to sell, donate or throw out no-longer-needed items, Mir said.
“Our goal is to use our understanding of technology to innovate in a category… that has seen very little technological investment in the past few decades,” Mir said.
Founded in 2015, California-based Clutter, which has warehouses in 1,000 cities across the country, positions itself as a tech-driven self-storage company. The firm will pick up and store customers’ belongings for them, using a catalogue to help keep track of items. Earlier this year, SoftBank’s Vision Fund led a financing round that raked in $200 million for Clutter. In 2017, the startup raised $64 million.
Other players in the on-demand self-storage space include MakeSpace, Boxie24 and Livible, which in January announced it raised $16 million in new funding.
Nationally, the self-storage sector has seen strong demand and vacancy below 10 percent since 2015, according to a recent market report from real estate services firm Marcus & Millichap. Demand is expected to continue as baby boomers continue to retire and millennials start families, generating the need for more space. In the Northeast, however, new supply has lifted the vacancy rate, the firm found.