For instance, Executives with Public Storage, the industry’s 161-million-square-foot player, told investors on a conference call that about $4 billion worth of new facilities have been built this year and that there will probably be about that much more added in the year ahead. To put this in perspective, for the decade leading up to 2016, about $1 billion worth of new construction per year was typical.
Nevertheless, demand does not seem to be abating anytime soon. Green Street projects that 8% of the U.S. population uses self storage, compared to 3% a decade ago.
“People always need some place to store their junk,” Alice Chung, a commercial real-estate analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, told the WSJ. “No one is going to start moving their stuff out just to save $3 or $4 a month.”
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