Self Storage Rates Still Cooling From Last Year’s Record Highs but Development Stays Strong in 2023 — Texas, Florida & Arizona Cities Lead

Key takeaways:

• Self storage rates dropped by 5.2% nationally year-over-year in July 2023, accelerating above the average 3.8% year-over-year drop seen over the previous couple of months
• 83% of the country’s 150 largest cities saw street rate declines in July 2023
• New Orleans, LA, Gilbert, AZ, and Aurora, IL, saw the most significant rent decreases
• Boston, MA, Newark, NJ, and Worcester, MA, experienced the highest self storage price hikes, local undersupply still being a major factor
• Texas claims the highest volume of new self storage supply among metropolises, while Orlando, FL, is the city planning the most

Self storage rates are declining from the record highs in 2022, although some local markets are steadying or raising rents again. A cooler than usual housing market – which is a big driver of self storage demand – coupled with elevated self storage inventory levels in major markets put a damper on rent growth in the first months of 2023. Average national rates are still on a downward path and saw a 5.2% drop year-over-year in July, and they dropped 0.8% since June.

The standard 10’x10’ non-climate-controlled storage unit, which is used as the benchmark, now costs $127 per month on average nationally.

New Orleans, LA, Gilbert, AZ, and Aurora, IL, experienced the highest annual storage price decreases

The downward annual trend for street rates holds for around 83% of the country’s 150 largest cities, with double-digit drops in a dozen markets. But the month-over-month stats point to rebounds in several places, as 39% of the largest cities see either rent growth or no change.

Places experiencing self storage rent decreases are spread across the nation, including in trending states. Factors encouraging storage operators to drop their rents include local population declines, residential housing market fluctuations and high levels of storage inventory.

New Orleans, LA, saw street rates plunge year-over-year more than any other city, by 14.9% to $126/month in July 2023, somewhat in line with the city’s population decline. And the strength of the market here is still slackening month-over-month. Investor interest, however, is picking up after a quiet 2022, with over 89K square feet of self storage space scheduled to be delivered by the end of this year, which represents an approximately 3% increase of the local inventory.

Gilbert and Chandler are both in the top 10 of cities with rent decreases, despite the popularity of Arizona as a place to live and do business — the populations of both cities experienced double-digit increases over the past five years. Their year-over-year rate declines of 14.4% and 10.6% are backed up by sizable monthly rent drops. Both cities will have been experiencing the general cooling of the housing market, an effect that can be felt on the storage front as well.

Aurora, IL, scores third place with a drop in self storage street rates of 14.0% year-over-year. With a population loss of 9% over the past 5 years, which has been coupled with soaring home prices, the city has seen less move-in activity, and that is reflected in street rate performance. Storage units in Aurora rent for $92 per month, significantly below the national average.

Florida is trending as least as much as Arizona right now, with most of its major cities increasing their populations substantially. However, Pembroke Pines, Fort Lauderdale and Jacksonville are all registering double-digit year-over-year storage rent decreases — in the last-named city, the high storage provision per capita will have been a factor.

Mobile, AL, is a new entry among the top 10 of cities experiencing large rent reductions — and Birmingham, AL, somewhat affected by the sluggish home sales market, is just outside the list in 11^th place. Mobile’s self storage sector is affected by many of the same factors and its 10.8% year-over-year plunge in street rates is accompanied by the highest month-over-month drop in the top 10 at 5.7%.

Undersupplied Boston, MA, & Newark, NJ, see highest street rate hikes

Amid a rent drop frenzy across the nation, some cities have seen their storage markets booming with demand and price increases. This is happening particularly in places where there is a low inventory relative to population and which also rank high on migration radars.

Boston, MA, has less than 0.7 square feet of self storage per capita, the lowest inventory relative to population among the 150 cities we looked at. Driven by the undersupply, it now costs $228/month to rent a storage unit in Boston, 10.1% more than a year ago. These trends will most likely stay on the same path as no new stock is scheduled to come online this year in Beantown.

Sharing the same boat as Boston, Newark, NJ, experienced the second-highest year-over-year street rate increase in the country, a rise of 6.5%, with renting a storage unit here costing $147 at the end of July 2023. Despite being barely better supplied than Boston, it similarly has no plans to add to this in 2023.

Located in the Greater Los Angeles area, Long Beach, CA, is a newcomer to the top 10 of cities for street rate growth, registering a 3.6% year-over-year hike. Long Beach’s average storage unit cost of $201 is driven by another low storage provision of 2.1 square feet per person. Fresno, the other California city experiencing a top-10 rent hike, actually has a generous storage provision around the national average of 7 square feet per capita — its growing population, in contrast to Long Beach’s, will be a factor in this.

Broadening the scope slightly beyond actual cities, New Yorkers might like to know that the Borough of Manhattan would get 8th place with a year-over-year rent decline of 3.08% — to a still very high street rate of $401. The borough added over 17K people in 2022 – a population rebound following a decline in 2021 – which caused an increase in demand for storage space away from home.

Florida, Texas & Arizona dominate the list of new self storage supply hotspots in 2023, but Vegas, Philly & Boise, ID, also step up

Understandably, states experiencing positive in-migration tend to be the ones building new storage most vigorously — they are also all hot locations, which strongly motivates the use of climate-controlled storage. These regions are joined by certain key cities around the nation.

Top 100 Cities for 2023 Expected Construction

Orlando, FL, is a migration magnet that saw its population explode by 12% over the last 5 years. The city’s storage large inventory — and provision per capita hovering around the national average — meets the needs of residents both new and old. Interest in self storage is clearly very much alive in Orlando, as it comes in 10^th in the US for the number of self storage searches – roughly 8,000 per month.

The Sunshine State’s other top-10 storage sector, Tallahassee, FL, is expanding despite an even greater provision per capita. Florida’s combination of positive factors, including its enduring popularity for new residents and weather issues that motivate storage use, lets local developers have confidence in continuing demand, resulting in robust construction pipelines.

Texas has been leading real estate development across all sectors and self storage is no exception, with San Antonio, TX, most strongly representing the industry. Meanwhile, the 307K square feet of space due to be added by the end of this year in Fort Worth, TX, will be equaled by Houston, just outside the list in 11^th place. Lone Star State cities tend to have storage provisions around the national average or better, yet are confidently increasing their inventories, confirming Texans’ long-standing enthusiasm for the storage sector.

Arizona also brings two locations to the top 10 of cities developing storage space this year. And as in Texas, this is not particularly due to undersupply. Although the city of Phoenix, AZ, provides a moderate 5.1 square feet of space per resident, the equivalent figure for third-placed Tucson, AZ, is a generous 8.1, and yet the city will add around half a million square feet this year. It is predicted that Arizona housing prices will rise further, encouraging the self storage sector to build more to compensate for residents who experience smaller-than-ideal housing.

"In addition to the traditional sources of demand that revolve around the 4Ds, there’s strong interest in self storage emerging from business and work-related needs," says Doug Ressler, a Business Intelligence Manager at Yardi Matrix, RentCafe’s sister division and a commercial real estate research firm. “As employers and employees alike juggle time spent in an office and time spent working from home, the popularity of flexible workspace is another driver for the self storage sector, which provides space for office supplies, materials and stock”.

“The southern states of the US are experiencing some of the highest growth in demand for flexible workspace. Improved lifestyles, tax breaks and a warmer climate are some of the key drivers for businesses relocating to hotspots such as Miami, Phoenix and Austin. In these markets, demand is far outstripping supply, putting the existing inventory under pressure. The self storage market can help relieve some of that pressure as it allows tenants to store extra stuff in convenient storage spaces nearby. Self storage developers were ahead of the curve in a sense as they’ve put facilities in key locations so as to respond to the large-scale migration to the south. In Florida, for example, Jacksonville and Tallahassee have very high storage provisions of over 9 square feet per person. In Arizona, Tucson offers 7.8 square feet per capita, and Metro Phoenix cities are often not far behind. Texas of course thinks big, with Austin being one of the most storage-rich large cities in the country, offering roughly 8 square feet per person,” Doug says.

Methodology

This analysis was done by RentCafe Self Storage, an online platform that provides apartment and storage unit listings across the nation.

The report looks into self storage rent rates and construction trends in July 2023. We considered 150 of the largest U.S. cities by population that have at least 10 self storage facilities.

To include data on remote workers, we turned to the U.S. Census (2021 data set).

Data on self storage street rates and construction estimates for 2023 came from our sister division Yardi Matrix, a business development and asset management tool for brokers, sponsors, banks and equity sources underwriting investments in the multifamily, office, industrial and self storage sectors.

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