After self storage became an increasingly essential service during recent challenging years, in 2022 its activities cooled somewhat. However, the sector\u2019s customer base is now wider and the momentum for building new facilities remains strong, with Sun Belt cities and places experiencing population growth leading the way.<\/p>\n
Last year, storage construction matched a strong self storage market, bringing 552 new facilities online with a total of 40.4M rentable storage space, as per\u00a0Yardi Matrix<\/a>\u00a0data. While that represented a small 16.9% decrease from the exceptional self storage year of 2021<\/a>, it is still considerably more than the inventory additions of a few years ago \u2014 32M and 25M square feet were added in 2016 and 2015, respectively. Even with exceptional needs diminishing as the pandemic wound down, the sector\u2019s increased appreciation among the public will have persuaded many real estate investors to continue favoring the storage sector over others.<\/p>\n Analysis of self storage completions in 2022 reveals that the Sunbelt continues to have the most enthusiasm for the sector \u2014 paralleling recent real estate development<\/a> \u2014 with Florida cities in evidence. Understandably, places with expanding populations \u2014 for example in Texas, Nevada and Arizona \u2014 often developed the most new rentable storage space. Tennessee also built confidently, while Staten Island upped its inventory to challenge other New York City boroughs, and Indianapolis led construction in the Midwest.<\/p>\n