Is Your City Seeing More Self-Storage Supply?

A New Era: Tracking Supply Growth in Real-time

The self-storage industry is in the midst of an unprecedented development cycle with self-storage construction value put in place nearly 3x the prior peak. In the quest to avoid overbuilding, it is imperative to understand where new competition is entering the market. In that light, Union Realtime is excited to announce that for the first time in the industry’s history we can now track new deliveries across the entire United States in real-time.

Self-Storage Growth for the Entire U.S.

The self-storage industry added at 791 new self-storage facilities in 2017, over double the number of new stores added in 2016. Looking at net rentable square feet (NRSF), the country grew 1.3% and 2.7% in 2016 and 2017, respectively.

Supply Growth by Region — Top 10

Texas leads the industry growth with 3 markets in the top 10. 5 markets have experienced double digit supply growth over the last 2 years.

Keeping an Eye on What Has Been Built

In recent years, lease-up times for a new self-storage facility had compressed to as little as one year in many regions. As the market starts to digest 2016/2017 deliveries we are seeing lease-up times extend to 3 years or more. Because of these extended lease-up times it is just as important to track deliveries over the last 2/3 years as it is to track development projects in planning or under construction.