or years, self-storage operators have focused on occupancy rates, rental pricing, and operational efficiency as the primary levers for profitability. Those factors certainly matter, but many facility owners are overlooking one of the most influential drivers of revenue growth: understanding the customer who is often making the storage decision in the first place.

Women frequently play a leading role in household organization, relocation planning, downsizing, remodeling projects, family transitions, and small business operations. Industry discussions increasingly recognize that female consumers are often the researchers, evaluators, and decision-makers behind storage purchases. External industry commentary consistently points to safety, convenience, trust, cleanliness, and ease of use as key factors influencing storage selection.

The facilities that understand these priorities create a more profitable business.

This is where female consumers present a significant opportunity.

Women often evaluate a storage facility through a different lens than simply monthly rent. They may ask:

• Does the facility feel safe?
• Is the property well lit?
• Is someone available to help if needed?
• Can I easily access my unit?
• Does this company appear trustworthy?
• Will my belongings remain protected?

The most successful operators understand security is actually a profit center. Female consumers frequently place an even higher emphasis on feeling secure while visiting a facility alone. Simple investments can produce outsized returns. Some examples include:

• Improved lighting throughout the property,
• Clear sightlines between buildings,
• Modern access controls,
• Visible camera coverage,
• Emergency assistance options, and
• Quickly maintained gates and locks.

Security does not simply reduce risk. It increases perceived value.

For many women, however, the value of a storage unit extends far beyond the dollar value of the items inside.

A storage unit may hold a child’s artwork from elementary school, boxes of family photographs that document generations of memories, holiday decorations that have been passed down through the family, or furniture from a beloved parent or grandparent. It may contain keepsakes from a wedding, baby clothes preserved for future generations, or personal belongings being safeguarded during a difficult life transition. These items are often irreplaceable.

When a woman evaluates a storage facility, she is frequently considering more than whether her belongings will remain dry and secure. She is asking whether the memories, milestones, and family history connected to those belongings will be protected as well.

When customers feel confident that both their possessions and the memories attached to them are being protected, they are often more willing to choose a facility based on trust and peace of mind rather than price alone. In a competitive market, emotional confidence can become a significant differentiator and a driver of long-term customer loyalty.

To a female customer evaluating multiple facilities, a clean property often communicates much more than maintenance standards. It communicates professionalism, reliability, and care.

Peeling paint, poor lighting, cluttered offices, overflowing trash bins, or dirty hallways create doubt. If a facility appears neglected, customers naturally question how well their belongings will be protected.

Conversely, a clean, organized facility creates confidence. It reassures customers that management pays attention to details and takes ownership seriously.

The result is often greater willingness to rent, increased referrals, and stronger online reviews.

Women balancing careers, families, caregiving responsibilities, and personal commitments often place enormous value on time-saving solutions.

The operators winning market share are making every interaction easier. This includes:

• Online rentals,
• Mobile-friendly websites,
• Digital lease signing,
• Automated payment options,
• Contactless move-ins,
• Fast response times, and
• Clear communication.

As storage operators increasingly adopt technology and remote management capabilities, responsiveness becomes even more important. Customers frequently need storage during stressful transitions and often choose the facility that responds first. Internal industry marketing content also highlights responsiveness as a critical conversion factor.

Every point of friction removed from the customer journey increases the likelihood of conversion.

Motion-sensor lighting, climate-controlled spaces, and clean, modern finishes create a more welcoming experience for all customers.

Industry materials increasingly highlight design features that improve usability, navigation, lighting, and overall comfort. These improvements do not simply make facilities look better. They make facilities feel safer and easier to use.

The emotional experience customers have while touring a property can be as influential as the physical product itself.

Women are often influential within family, social, community, and professional networks. A positive storage experience during a move, renovation, business expansion, or life transition can generate referrals for years.

Strong reviews, social recommendations, and word-of-mouth referrals remain some of the highest-return marketing investments available.

Facility owners who intentionally design their operations around the factors female consumers value most—safety, cleanliness, transparency, convenience, trust, and service—create businesses that stand apart from competitors.

The result is not just happier customers. It is stronger conversion rates, higher customer retention, greater pricing power, better online reviews, more referrals, and ultimately greater profitability.

id you know that LinkedIn is one of the top five sources cited by AI answer tools? In the last year, LinkedIn has increasingly been cited as a credible source of information, and the AI Answer Engines mention the people or companies sharing it.

Along with Reddit, YouTube, and Wikipedia, LinkedIn consistently ranks among the top five platforms cited by AI answer tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s Gemini AI Overviews or AI Mode. It’s much easier to use than Reddit, and it’s less time-consuming than creating YouTube videos. It’s where you can become known as an expert in your field or industry, in addition to building credibility and topical authority.

Back in June 2024, I wrote an article for Messenger, “The Two Sides of LinkedIn”, that covered the basics of LinkedIn, so I’ll get into what’s new.

Like everything in the AI world, the self-storage industry is evolving rapidly, and so is the way investors, vendors, and facility owners find information. Whether someone is a large franchise operator looking for new gate access software, an investor seeking off-market deals, or a mom-and-pop owner researching how to increase their profits, they are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) for answers.

That same study noted that across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode, an average of 11 percent of AI responses reference LinkedIn. On ChatGPT specifically, that number is 14 percent. This means that more than one in eight AI answers that your potential customers are reading is shaped by a LinkedIn post. If your brand or facility is not consistently publishing on LinkedIn, someone else’s content will fill the gap and shape what AI tells the market about your field.

A post with 10 reactions gets cited at the same rate as a post with 100 reactions; the median cited post actually only has 15 to 25 reactions and a single comment. Even better for small mom-and-pop operators or solo real estate investors is that people with under 500 followers get cited at the same rate—and sometimes more—than creators with massive followings. AI search engines do not reward popularity contests; they reward the most relevant, highly specific answers. This levels the playing field.

• Top-of-Funnel (TOFU) Growth Content (35 percent) – Broad industry observations are designed to attract new followers. For example, you could write a “newsjacking” post reacting to a recent industry report.
• Middle-of-Funnel (MOFU) Authority Content (35 percent) – Share deep expertise and educational posts that build trust using an infographic.
• Bottom-of-Funnel (BOFU) Conversion Content (20 percent) – These are lead-generating posts. The most effective format here is case studies. For instance, a consultant can detail how an underperforming mom-and-pop facility went from 60 percent occupancy to 95 percent occupancy in six months. Highlight the exact steps taken and provide real numbers as proof.
• Personal Content (10 percent) – Share stories about your journey as a real estate investor or business owner to humanize your brand and deepen connections with your existing network. This helps build trust and credibility.

Old: Going broad to go viral.
New: Going niche to get found. Each post should be catered to a niche target market.

Old: Posting two to three times a week.
New: Posting as often as you can—the more posts, the better to feed the AI chatbots.

Old: Short, clipped, one-liner posts.
New: Writing like a human again. Write for your target audience, even if you think they’re not on LinkedIn.

Old: Links buried in the comments.
New: Links in the post. You can even put more than one!

Old: Carousels rule the feed.
New: Infographics rule the feed. Using NotebookLM from Google, you can easily create infographics in minutes.

By the way, ChatGPT now commands 92 percent of AI referral traffic! Don’t you want to increase your chances of being cited? Note: AI tools are evolving so quickly that by the time you read this, there will be changes, new tools, and new tricks. Follow me on LinkedIn to get the latest news and tips: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giselleaguiar.

hat is an alternate contact? The alternate contact is someone we contact if we can’t reach the main contact listed on the rental agreement. This person often knows where the main contact is, or how to reach them, especially in urgent situations like a lien sale. While the primary use of the alternate contact is during a lien sale, we also rely on them if something happens at the property, such as a leak from their unit. If we try to contact the main person and they are unavailable, we reach out to the alternate.

Typically, I say to the alternate, “Hi, we’re trying to get in touch with [Name] regarding their storage unit. Can you assist us with that?” We do send pre-liens and lien notices to these alternate contacts, but keep in mind that not all individuals are aware they are designated as alternates.

If someone tells me they are divorced from the primary contact or requests removal as the alternate, I ask them to provide a confirmation letter to be removed from the list. However, if there’s going to be a lien sale, I will still send documents to that alternate contact, unless I have been provided with a new one.

The alternate contact cannot access the unit, remove property, make account changes, sign documents, or terminate the lease—those actions are not allowed.

We try to have an alternate contact so we can inform the tenant that their belongings will be auctioned. There have been instances when I’ve called the alternate contact because we couldn’t reach the primary tenant. I remember a situation where I had to move items from one storage facility to another. Having alternate contacts proved to be incredibly helpful. I was very grateful for their assistance, as they often had valuable information, like, “Oh yeah, they moved to a different place now.”

I know some managers might say that providing an alternate contact is optional, but I don’t think that should be the case. It’s beneficial to have an alternate contact who isn’t responsible for payments in case we need to reach someone. It’s better to have someone who knows where the tenant might be if they’ve moved or if something has happened to them.

Best practices dictate that we should always ask for an alternate contact. Even if they decline, at least we can say we made the effort to ask.

Some people claim legal authority to access the unit, but I would argue that they must have a court order. Sometimes individuals present a death certificate, claiming, “My parents have passed away. Here is the death certificate.” However, anyone can obtain a death certificate, so that doesn’t suffice. They must go to court and state, “I need permission to access this storage unit, and it is in my father’s name. I am the sole heir.”

Just being an alternate contact does not grant them any legal status to access that unit. They must have a specific document. This policy protects the customer’s property and minimizes your liability.

If the alternate address is missing, I give them a piece of stationery with the facility’s address. Once they obtain that information, they can send it to the facility to be attached to their contract.

Many storage facilities have faced significant consequences, especially during lien sales, for failing to send the proper documentation to the alternate contacts. It is crucial to follow these guidelines to avoid any issues.

For security, it’s important to send them a credit card authorization form, if needed, and have them sign it. This way, they can’t initiate a chargeback, and you won’t be left in a difficult situation.

Additionally, it’s best practice for storage managers to collect complete contact information from all customers.

Sometimes we address these issues, but we don’t always take action. If you hear that someone has split, for instance, it’s important to follow up. Most of the time we’re sitting in front of computer screens, no longer dealing with paper copies, so this is an easy task.

Including an alternate contact in the rental agreement is a critical step that should not be overlooked. This designated person, whether a friend, family member, or another trusted individual, serves as an important communication link in case issues arise, such as missed payments or unexpected challenges. While they don’t have decision-making rights for the account, having an alternate contact can facilitate essential communication, especially when the customer may be unable to respond, such as during hospitalization. This proactive measure helps ensure that important notifications reach someone who can act, if necessary, ultimately safeguarding both the customer’s interests and the integrity of the rental agreement.

ost operators can tell you their occupancy to the decimal. Ask them how many rental inquiries they missed last month and you’ll get a blank stare. That blind spot is the biggest revenue leak in most storage businesses, and almost nobody measures it.

I’ve spent 24 years in self-storage: 13 running facilities and 11 on the systems side. In all that time, I have never audited an operation and found zero missed inquiries. Not once. What I find instead is an operator who’s certain their team answers everything, sitting on a phone report showing 20, 30, sometimes nearly 40 percent of inbound calls going unanswered. One operation I reviewed had 10 people handling inquiries and it was still missing more than a third of its calls. Nobody knew because nobody was counting.

That behavior is why a missed call is not a delayed sale. The prospect who hits your voicemail at 6:40 p.m. does not set a reminder to try you again tomorrow. They hang up and dial the facility down the street. By the time your manager checks messages the next morning, that customer has already booked a unit, and the voicemail they left, if they left one at all, is a record of revenue that went to your competitor.

The same thing happens on every other channel, just quieter: the web form that gets answered the next business day, the text or WhatsApp thread that sits unread over the weekend, and the chat widget that fires an auto-reply message and then goes silent. Each of these is a missed call without the ringtone.

And the worst of it happens after hours. A large share of storage inquiries come in evenings and weekends, exactly when life events force the decision and exactly when most facilities stop answering. The competitor with an online booking flow or a live channel at 9 p.m. is not better at storage. They are just present when the customer shows up.

Pull the missed-call report from your phone system. Every modern phone platform has one. Count the calls that rang out or went to voicemail during business hours and count every call that came in after office hours. Then, do the same exercise for your other channels: web form submissions and their response times, text messages, WhatsApp, and chat. If a channel has no way to report on response time, that tells you something too.

Now do the math. Say you find 40 missed contacts in a month. Not all of those are rental inquiries, so be conservative and call half of them noise: wrong numbers, vendors, existing customers. That leaves 20 genuine prospects. If your team normally converts a third of rental inquiries, that is roughly seven rentals you never had the chance to win. At a $150 monthly rate and a 10 month average stay, each one is worth about $1,500. That single month of missed contacts cost you around $10,000 in lifetime revenue, and the leak repeats every month.

Run your own numbers. They will be different from mine. The point is that once you attach a dollar figure to the leak, it stops being an operational footnote and becomes the most expensive problem in the building. Operators spend real money on paid search and aggregator listings to make the phone ring, then lose the rental at the exact moment the marketing worked.

In most operations, the phone rings at the counter, the web form goes to an inbox, text messages land on a mobile phone in someone’s pocket, and chat belongs to whoever set up the website—four or five channels, four or five places to watch, no single view of what came in and what got handled. Inquiries do not fall through because people ignore them. They fall through because no one can see them all in one place.

Once every inquiry lands in one queue, three things become possible that were impossible before. Nothing can silently disappear, because every contact is a line item until someone closes it. You can set a response-time standard and actually hold to it, because the clock is visible. And you can report on the whole funnel weekly: inquiries in, response times, conversions out, by channel.

What I would not do is buy the automation first. An AI agent bolted onto a fragmented setup just answers one channel faster while the other four keep leaking. Get every channel into one queue, measure for a month, and then decide where a person, a service, or a machine covers the gaps. The measurement usually makes the staffing decision obvious.

Fix the cheapest gaps first. Set your phone system to route unanswered calls to a backup line instead of voicemail. Put an auto-response with a booking link on after-hours channels so a 9 p.m. prospect can reserve a unit instead of calling your competitor at 9 a.m. Assign one named owner to each channel until consolidation happens, so at minimum somebody is accountable for every inbox.

Then, consolidate. Get the channels into one system with one queue, set a response-time target your team can see, and review the missed-inquiry number every week alongside occupancy and delinquency, because it belongs in that company.

You already paid to make the phone ring. Answering it is the cheapest marketing you will ever buy.

ost articles about mover partnerships are written from inside the storage office. This one is written from the truck.

I run a company that does both. We move households and commercial sites, and we operate storage. That means I spend part of my week as the kind of operator Messenger writes for, and the rest of it as the person storage facilities are trying to recruit. I get the emails. I get the drop-in visits with the branded pens. I also decide, several times a week, which facility a crew chief recommends when a customer says the words every mover hears eventually: “We’re not going to be ready in time.”

That decision is worth more than most facilities realize, and it is made on criteria that almost nobody pitches to.

What makes movers distinct is timing and certainty. Around 32 percent of self-storage users are in the middle of a household move. A mover is not introducing storage as an idea to someone browsing options. The mover is standing in a half-packed living room at the exact moment the customer discovers their new place will not fit everything or that settlement slipped two weeks. The need is immediate, specific, and already sized. Referral leads generated this way convert at multiples of cold advertising leads, and every operator who has run both channels knows the difference in close rate is not subtle.

The current market makes this channel more valuable than it was three years ago, not less. National occupancy sat at 78.1 percent in the second quarter of 2026, up 1.4 points from the first quarter. On the surface, that reads as healthy. Look at what is underneath it. Average length of stay has stretched to 18.5 months, up 2.4 percent year over year, with 64 percent of customers now staying past 12 months and 46 percent past 24. Occupancy is holding not because move-ins are strong but because move-outs are weak. People are staying put.

That is a stable revenue base and a genuine acquisition problem. When the flow of new tenants thins, the channels that reach people at the precise moment of need become disproportionately important. There are still somewhere between 28 million and 31 million Americans relocating each year, and a large share of them touch a professional mover. That is the pool. The question is who is standing next to the customer when the storage conversation starts.

It is the mover—every time.

A referral that generates a difficult job is worse than no referral at all. We wear the labor overrun, and we wear the customer’s frustration, because we are the ones on site. So, the assessment runs roughly like this.

Access hours against crew schedules – This is the single biggest filter, and the one most facilities get wrong. A residential move commonly finishes between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. If your gate closes at 6 p.m., or your office closes at 5 p.m. and a new tenant cannot complete a lease after that, you are unusable for a meaningful share of jobs. Facilities with extended or 24-hour access get recommended for reasons that have nothing to do with how nice the office looks.

Drive-up vs. elevator – The difference between backing a truck to a roll-up door and running to a fifth-floor unit through a single elevator can be two to four hours of billable labor on the same volume of goods. If the customer is paying hourly, that difference lands on their invoice. They associate that cost with the mover, not the facility. Drive-up units get recommended first, consistently.

Turning radius and approach – 26-foot trucks and semi-trailers need room. Tight aisles, low canopies, sharp entry angles, and steep driveways get facilities quietly removed from the recommendation list after one bad experience. Most operators have never watched a truck attempt to maneuver their site and do not know they have this problem.

Staging space – Where does a crew put 40 boxes while sorting what goes into the unit? Facilities that allow brief staging near the door make jobs faster. Facilities that enforce a strict no-staging rule make them slower.

Insurance and certificates – A commercial move into a facility that demands a certificate of insurance with specific additional-insured wording, requested with no notice, stalls the job. Publish your requirements. Better still, hand them to your mover partners in advance so they can pre-issue.

Unit sizing accuracy – When a facility tells a customer a 10-by-10 will hold a three-bedroom home and it does not, the crew is standing in the parking lot at 6 p.m. with a third of a truck still loaded. This does more damage to a partnership than any commission dispute. Movers estimate volume for a living. If your sizing guidance is optimistic, we find out on day one and we stop referring.

Who signs and who pays – Can a lease be completed remotely before the truck arrives? Can a customer authorize a mover to collect keys? These sound like administrative details. They determine whether a job finishes at 5:30 p.m. or 8 p.m.

Responsiveness on the day – Something always changes: the unit is smaller than expected, the customer needs a second unit, the gate code does not work. A facility that answers the phone within two minutes on a Saturday afternoon earns referrals indefinitely. One that routes to voicemail loses them permanently.

Notice that none of these are marketing questions. A facility that scores well on this list will get referrals with no commission at all, because the mover benefits directly from a smooth job. A facility that scores badly will not be rescued by paying more.

The informal recommendation – There’s no agreement, no money—just a crew chief who names your facility because jobs there go well. This is the most common arrangement in the industry, yet it is the most undervalued. It costs nothing and it is entirely earned through operational quality. Most self-storage facilities should secure this before attempting anything more formal.

Flat-fee commission – This is a fixed payment per converted referral, commonly benchmarked against the incentives already used in tenant referral programs, where a free month of rent or a payment in the $50 range is standard. It’s simple to administer, easy to explain to crews, and works best when tracking is straightforward.

Percentage revenue share – It’s a share of the first several months of rent. This aligns both parties toward longer stays rather than volume, which matters more now that stay length is the primary driver of facility economics. It requires more administration and a clear end date. Ambiguity about when the share stops is the most common source of partnership disputes.

Reciprocal referral – With a reciprocal referral, no money moves in either direction. You refer storage customers who need a mover and the mover refers customers who need storage. This is frequently the strongest structure available because it removes the commercial friction entirely and both parties have a direct interest in the other performing well. It is also the one storage operators propose least often, usually because they underestimate how much moving demand originates in their own office.

Integrated or white label – Here the mover sells storage as part of a single quoted service and handles the customer relationship end to end. It’s the highest revenue per customer, lowest customer contact for you, and the most operational coordination. This suits facilities with excess capacity and a genuine appetite for a wholesale relationship rather than a referral one.

There is no universally correct choice. There is a correct sequence. Earn the informal recommendation first, because it validates that your site actually works for crews. Formalize it afterward. Facilities that lead with a commission offer before anyone has run a job at their site are asking movers to take a risk on their behalf and pay attention to paperwork at the same time.

Agree on attribution before the first referral, not after a disputed one. A named code, a dedicated phone number, or a simple pre-notification email from the mover all work. What does not work is reconstructing the source of a walk-in three weeks later. Every partnership that has soured in my experience soured over attribution, not over rate.

Put the end conditions in writing. When does a revenue share stop? What happens if the tenant transfers units, moves to a different site in your portfolio, or leaves and returns? These are unremarkable questions when settled in advance but relationship-ending when settled in arrears.

Finally, handle the tax and reporting side properly from the start. Referral payments to a business partner are ordinary commercial payments and need to be documented as such.

Sizing optimism is second. Nobody minds being told a unit is too small. Everybody minds discovering it at dusk.

Third is the absence of a single point of contact. When the crew chief has to explain the arrangement from scratch to whoever is behind the counter, the arrangement effectively does not exist. Name a person. Tell the mover who it is. Tell your own staff too, which is the step that gets missed.

Fourth is damage ambiguity. Goods in transit, goods in a unit, and goods in the corridor between the two sit under different coverage. Establish where responsibility transfers before an incident, because there is no neutral answer available after one occurs.

Time it for the off-season. Approaching a moving company in peak summer is approaching people who are working 14-hour days. Late fall and winter are when operations staff have time to think about next year.

Bring the operational answers, not a brochure. They want to know access hours, whether units are drive-up, truck clearance and turning radius, COI requirements and turnaround, sizing guidance you are confident in, and a direct phone number that a human answers on weekends. A mover can assess a partnership from that page alone and will be quietly impressed that you knew to bring it.

Offer a site visit to let a truck drive the loop. This single step separates facilities that understand the relationship from those that do not.

Then, propose a pilot: 10 referrals, one agreed structure, a defined review point. Make it low commitment, easy to say yes to, and it gives both sides real data instead of assumptions.

Watch length of stay by referral source. Given that stay duration now drives facility economics more than move-in volume, a channel producing 18-month tenants is worth substantially more per referral than one producing five-month tenants, and the difference will not appear in a move-in count.

Review quarterly, together, and ask the question most operators avoid: What went wrong on our site this quarter? You will get an honest answer, because the mover has every incentive for your facility to work better. That conversation is worth more than the referral fee.

Get those right and the referrals arrive whether or not you pay for them. Get them wrong and no commission structure will fix it, because the mover is protecting a customer relationship worth far more than your fee.

The good news for anyone reading this is that most of the items listed herein cost nothing to address. It only costs attention.

very quarter, our industry produces a national number, and every quarter operators read it as though it describes their business. Occupancy is up, rates are firming, and tenants are staying longer than they used to. Those headlines are accurate, and they’re the right way to understand where the industry as a whole is heading. They’re also not the numbers an operator should be making next week’s decisions against.

Storable’s Q2 Industry Pulse, drawn from more than 30,000 facilities, shows a sector that looks stable from a distance. National occupancy rose to 78.1 percent, move-in rates climbed nearly 5 percent off a soft first quarter, and length of stay held near where it has been all year. Underneath those numbers, though, the four regions of the country were doing genuinely different things. The Midwest and Northeast posted the quarter’s strongest occupancy gains at 1.7 points each. The South kept running the retention playbook, with move-ins down more than 9 percent year over year and occupancy held together by tenants who stayed put. And the West, still the most occupied region in the country at 80.4 percent, was the only region to lose ground compared to a year ago.

The West stands out here because it inverts what most operators assume about strong markets. The region with the fullest units is the region trending the wrong way, while the regions with lower occupancy are climbing toward it.

See the Year-Over-Year Regional Performance table.

See Q1 2026 Vs. Q2 2026 Regional Performance table.

The first is supply, which arrives on a local schedule. Development concentrated heavily in Sun Belt and western metros between 2021 and 2023, and those deliveries are still working through lease-up. The Northeast and Midwest barely built during that window, so they tightened first without needing demand to improve at all.

Migration is still unwinding from the pandemic reshuffle, as households that left coastal metros for the South continue to reverse course, and every household that leaves a market eventually empties a unit there while filling one somewhere else.

Housing lock-in also bites unevenly, punishing homeowners most where prices ran up the most, which is why western homeowners are more thoroughly stuck than midwestern ones. In markets where the gap between an existing mortgage rate and a new one costs less in absolute dollars, mobility resumes sooner.

And storage demand itself is built from local inputs, following job growth, household formation, military rotations, and university turnover, none of which move in national lockstep. A base realignment or a large employer’s expansion can reshape a single market’s demand for years without registering anywhere in a national figure.

Churn behaving normally again is the second signal. During the freeze, move-outs fell almost everywhere because nobody could move. When move-outs start rising in your market while your occupancy holds, that is mobility returning rather than a retention problem, and it is a signal most operators have been trained by the last three years to misread.

The third is whether pricing holds its ground once the busy season ends. Rates firming in July is ordinary. If a market can hold rates through a slow winter, that says more about local supply than anything a busy summer will tell you.

Most property management systems can already capture why a tenant is leaving, and it costs almost nothing to start asking. Knowing whether someone moved out because they bought a house or because a competitor opened down the street tells you something about your market that no quarterly report can. Very few operators track it consistently, which is part of why the industry keeps waiting on national data to explain what its own front counter already knows.

Our industry has spent three years waiting for a single national moment when the freeze ends and normal returns. The more likely outcome is that it ends in some markets a year before it ends in others, and the operators watching the industry average will be the last ones to find out their own market already turned.

When asked about a memory of Bush that has stayed with him over the years, he thinks for a moment before settling on the 2006 midterm election. Jennings recalls how many strategists wanted Bush to make major national security decisions to try to influence the outcome of the election—but the president refused. “Bush operated with a strong moral compass and a lot of integrity. He never put politics ahead of what he thought was right, particularly on national security.”

Jennings says some politicians will try anything to salvage a couple of points in the polls, but Bush wouldn’t budge, even under intense pressure. “We need people who are courageous enough to cast politics aside and do the right thing, and he fit that bill.”

After the midterms, when Republicans lost control of Congress, Jennings remembers an impromptu staff meeting. “We’d been shellacked, but the President pulled everyone together and said ‘Yes, we took a thumpin’, but we worked hard and I’m proud of you all.’ It was just an honest, human moment. So, that’s something I remember and something I’ve always admired about him.”

Unfortunately, there can be times when opponents ignore facts or a compelling argument out of emotion or bias. When that happens, Jennings is certain there will still be an audience out there that recognizes who came armed with the facts and made the stronger case. “I think if I were applying this to the setting you described, where a developer is going up against an unreasonable city official, knowing your stuff might make a difference in moving the ball with the other people in the room.”

Holding up a hand, he adds, “But that doesn’t always mean you’ll succeed. I don’t always win either, because sometimes I’m debating people who are extraordinarily smart and prepared themselves, like David Axelrod or Van Jones, so I often have worthy opponents just like people in your industry.”

Beyond industry-specific impacts, Jennings believes there are broader signs of economic improvement. He points to inflation data as evidence that price pressures are easing, which should help everyone.

“Month-over-month inflation data in mid-July showed the biggest one-month drop since April of 2020, so I do think we have seen a calming of the inflation waters. That doesn’t mean there’s no inflation, but we’re not seeing what we did during the Biden administration, so that’s No. 1.”

He goes on to say, “No. 2, depending on your industry, I do think the administration’s policies have led to some incentive for investment. Some industries have put capital into jobs and economic expansion in the United States, and they have directly said, ‘This is because of the President.’”

Jennings also applauds the decision to make Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent, calling it a clear, unequivocal success that benefits the economy and working-class Americans. Though he’s certain Democrats could make the argument that the cuts are working against these individuals, he says the proof will be in the midterm results. “That’s sort of the point of an election, right? Both sides make their case, and you see where the chips fall, so we’ll see in November.”

On the regulation front, Jennings also thinks Trump has largely been consistent with what you would expect a conservative to do: reduce government regulations. “The federal government is as small as it’s been since 1966,” he notes. “Every Republican I’ve ever worked for has said they were going to shrink the government—Trump actually did.”

Of course, government regulation remains a thorn in the sides of many self-storage owners as more states crack down on the industry, with January’s California Senate Bill 709 and NYC Local Laws 162 and 171 raising eyebrows and concern.

“Everyone is impacted at the federal level, but some of the most dramatic policy changes are happening at the state level,” says Jennings. “You’re getting wildly different outcomes depending on whether you live in a blue state or a red state. I’m sure your people in self-storage have experienced that.”

Many business owners Jennings has spoken with have been taking note of the radically different business environments across states. “The business environment in, say, Florida or Texas is so much different than a California or a New York. It’s just drastic when you have states that have been run for years by Democrats. The regulatory environment is wild.”

Following the midterms, Jennings expects the experiences of self-storage operators to be different based on location and size. “If you’re a large one, then you’re obviously existing in lots of different locations, so the variability in your policy outcomes is probably vast. If you have one or two facilities, chances are you’re in the same location, so the variability is smaller.”

After spending an hour with Scott Jennings, something becomes clear: Whether challenging his family, deliberating with peers, or making a case for his country, he’s not simply a contrarian—he follows his convictions. And for Jennings, those aren’t up for debate.

he roar of the 1920s came to an abrupt halt at the end of the decade when the stock market crashed, plunging the nation into the Great Depression. As factories closed and businesses went bankrupt, millions of Americans lost their jobs, savings, and even their homes. In 1938, as the country continued to struggle through the depression, Atlanta Mission opened its doors as a small soup kitchen and 20-bed shelter.

Today, Atlanta Mission is the city’s largest and longest-running provider of services for those experiencing hunger and homelessness. However, Atlanta Mission’s work now extends far beyond providing food and shelter. Through counseling, addiction recovery, education, career development, and spiritual support, the organization equips people with the tools they need to rebuild independent lives. In 2025 alone, the nonprofit served more than 773,000 meals, provided nearly 260,000 bed nights, conducted approximately 4,200 counseling sessions, and enrolled 695 individuals in addiction recovery services.

“At Atlanta Mission, we believe the future worth building is one centered on human dignity, where efficiency, scale, and systems exist to serve people, not the other way around,” says Tensley Almand, president and CEO of Atlanta Mission. “So, when I think about Atlanta’s future, I don’t just picture new buildings popping up along the skyline—I picture people.”

According to Atlanta Mission, one of the most common misconceptions is that homelessness is a choice. In reality, most people desperately want stable housing but have been derailed by circumstances such as job loss, medical emergencies, domestic violence, or the rising cost of housing.

Addiction and mental illness are often assumed to be the primary causes of homelessness. While both are challenges for some clients, per Atlanta Mission, they are frequently symptoms of deeper issues, including trauma and relational poverty. In Atlanta, fewer than one-third of people experiencing homelessness struggle with substance abuse, and roughly one in three reports living with a serious mental illness.

The face of homelessness is also far more diverse than many people realize. While single men are often the most visible, Atlanta Mission serves families with children, military veterans, women escaping domestic violence, and countless others whose housing insecurity may be largely invisible to the public. Some sleep in their cars, while others move from couch to couch, hidden in plain sight.

“One of our goals is to break the stigmas surrounding homelessness,” says Almand. “We also don’t ever want homelessness to define who someone is. We see it as a circumstance, one that people can overcome with the right support, relationships, and opportunities.”

Next comes “Find Hope,” where relationships begin to form. Social workers sit alongside clients to better understand challenges such as addiction, mental health, employment history, and housing instability. Rather than rushing people through the system, Atlanta Mission focuses on identifying the barriers that have prevented long-term stability.

The most significant step is “Choose Help.” Clients who decide they are ready to pursue lasting change meet with an ambassador, who conducts a comprehensive assessment over multiple one-on-one conversations. Together, they determine whether the individual is ready to enter Atlanta Mission’s long-term residential transformation program known as “Make Progress.”

Those accepted into Atlanta Mission’s residential transformation program begin rebuilding their lives on campus, where housing, childcare, meals, clothing, counseling, and other essential services are provided at no cost. Residents remain there throughout the program, focusing on recovery, personal growth, and preparing for employment.

Atlanta Mission also works to keep families together whenever possible. Because the children of its residents often arrive behind in school, the Mission offers tutoring, counseling, and academic support to help them catch up while their parents rebuild stability.

Launched in 2019, Next Steps prepares Atlanta Mission clients for careers, helps them find work, and then supports them long after they’ve been hired. “Before Next Steps, clients received some vocational training, but there was no official program in place,” says Julie Stokes, director of vocational services. “We knew we needed something better, but none of the external resources we looked into were a good fit until we found Cara Collective.”

Cara Collective is a nationally recognized nonprofit that helps organizations develop career programs for people overcoming homelessness and poverty. After studying more than 30,000 job placements, the organization identified a common pattern: Technical skills may help someone get hired, but soft skills are often what determine whether they stay employed.

Stokes says, “There are five that get people fired: time management, teamwork, conflict management, communication, and professionalism.”

Those five workplace habits form the foundation of Next Steps’ four-week curriculum, which consists of 64 classes designed to help clients recognize and break patterns that have often followed them from job to job. Along with classroom instruction, participants practice real-world scenarios before graduating and being paired with a job search coach who helps refine résumés, prepare for interviews, and identify employment opportunities.

To help overcome that obstacle, every graduate is assigned a retention coach who stays with them for an entire year after they’re hired. Rather than solving problems for clients, coaches help them navigate the everyday challenges that can threaten employment, from workplace conflicts and childcare issues to transportation problems and difficult conversations with supervisors. “Anybody can help you create a résumé. Anybody can help you job search,” says Stokes. “It’s in those moments of conversation, of push and tug and pull, where a client finally says, ‘I haven’t told anybody else this, but …’”

For Stokes, those conversations are what make the program successful. Many clients arrive carrying years of trauma and self-doubt, possibly even criminal records, making trust just as important as résumé writing or interview preparation. “We like to say that what we do in Next Steps is the bridge between a client being stable and a client actually seeing opportunity,” she says. “It’s where they first begin to think, ‘I actually can do this.’”

After seven years, the results have been encouraging. Approximately 71.5 percent of participants who complete the program secure employment and remain on the job for at least a year, a figure Stokes believes reflects the program’s emphasis on long-term success rather than simply finding work. “We find that a good majority of those who finish that first year end it with promotions,” she says. “We’ll get phone calls three or four months in saying someone has been moved into a lead role or taken on additional responsibilities.”

Stokes credits those successes to the workplace habits clients spend weeks developing, from communication and professionalism to conflict resolution and time management. “It’s really about getting clients to think beyond the next paycheck,” she says. “We want them thinking about where they’ll be a year from now, what opportunities they’ll have, and what their future can look like.”

Ultimately, she says, the goal isn’t simply employment. “It’s really about getting clients to believe in themselves.”

“Everybody’s got different trauma and different issues they’re coming in with,” says Stokes. “We’ve had people come in with no job experience, and we’ve had them come in with doctorates. We had a CFO stay with us once. Our clients come from all walks of life.”

That diversity is one reason Next Steps focuses less on teaching technical trades and more on developing workplace habits that apply across virtually every profession. “The soft skills apply in any role that you’re in,” says Stokes.

She recalls preparing a volunteer to conduct mock interviews with two clients on the same day. The first was a young mother in her early 20s applying for a fast-food position, where scheduling around childcare would be a major consideration. The second was a man who had spent two decades working in cybersecurity and information technology before finding himself at Atlanta Mission. “Everybody has a different set of needs,” says Stokes, “and they’re all looking for something different.”

While faith is central to Atlanta Mission’s identity, participation in religious activities is not a condition of receiving services. Faith-based classes, prayer, and chapel services are available, but participation is voluntary, and clients are never denied assistance because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, or personal beliefs. “Nothing is forced,” says Stokes. “If you want to talk about faith, great. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s OK. The goal is to get you employed.”

Support extends well beyond financial contributions. Atlanta-area residents can donate furniture, clothing, and household goods through the Mission’s thrift stores, with proceeds helping fund its programs. Businesses frequently organize drives to collect hygiene kits, cleaning supplies, and other essentials that help clients transition into permanent housing, while volunteers serve meals, conduct mock interviews, teach classes, and assist with special events throughout the year. “There are all kinds of ways to get involved,” says Stokes. “It really depends on your passion and what you feel comfortable with.”

Whether through financial gifts, donated supplies, or volunteer service, every contribution helps Atlanta Mission continue the work it began nearly 90 years ago, restoring hope and creating pathways to independence for thousands of men, women, and children.

t began with a handful of consumer complaints and quickly snowballed, as the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) became inundated with grievances against self-storage facilities’ pricing practices. In several cases cited by the city, initial rates around $150 reportedly jumped to $300 or more, forcing tenants to pay higher prices or incur the cost and burden of moving their stored belongings elsewhere; additional complaints followed, citing flooded and vermin-infested units.

The DCWP, under the administration of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, zeroed in on Extra Space Storage, arguably the largest provider of self-storage in the metro area with approximately 60 locations. The city filed a lawsuit seeking approximately $5 million in civil penalties. Despite disagreement with the allegations, Extra Space settled for $1.7 million to “best serve the interests of its customers, team members, and stakeholders.” But the story was far from over.

New York City then proposed a broad range of self-storage regulations, which ignited one of the industry’s biggest regulatory battles in years. City officials claimed the laws are intended to strengthen consumer protections, while many operators argued that they go far beyond what lawmakers intended.

Now, the dust has settled. The DCWP announced its decisions Aug. 25. While the industry now has answers to questions it’s been asking for months, understanding the outcome requires looking back at where the battle began—with a unified industry response that went mostly ignored. And what happened behind the scenes may be nearly as interesting as what comes next.

“[We have] identified numerous provisions that exceed the Department’s statutory authority or impose compliance burdens disproportionate to their intended benefits,” wrote Brett Nelson, senior vice president of general counsel at Extra Space Storage. “The rules will require operators to undertake costly operational challenges. This is particularly true for smaller, independent operators.”

One of the recurring arguments was that the DCWP misunderstood how self-storage works. For example, operators objected to a “simple cancellation mechanism” that essentially compared a storage unit to a streaming service that could be canceled with the click of a button, which would allow them to exit the agreement and leave their belongings behind; there was no need for that, they countered, when leases were already month to month.

Likening self-storage to living space was also a point of contention. “The Department should remove or revise provisions that apply residential housing concepts to self-storage, impose warehousing-style operational standards, require specialized staffing or certifications, or create unclear compliance obligations,” said Stanley Bonilla, senior vice president of asset management and development for Safeguard.

Operators also found the schedule-of-rates requirements vague, while arguing self-storage pricing is always in flux based on inventory, promotions, market demand, and operating costs. “A static public schedule of rates may not accurately reflect what a specific customer will be offered,” wrote Joe Doherty, executive vice president and chief legal officer for the Self Storage Association (SSA). “As a result, public posting may create more confusion, not less.”

Committing to a maximum occupancy fee 12 months into the future was another issue for operators, who said it could result in inflated rent maximums to provide a buffer against unforeseen cost increases; Extra Space further added that transparency among competitors could lead to effects similar to price-fixing agreements.

The extensive electronic recordkeeping requirements being proposed were also deemed problematic. Tanya Oberoi with Storage Plus wrote, “The cumulative burden of these requirements may require significant investments, particularly for independent and mid-sized operators like us.”

Lastly, numerous operators felt the proposed regulations overlapped with or contradicted existing state lien law, in particular giving tenants in default access to “essential goods” such as medications and important documents. Manhattan Mini Storage summed things up by saying its occupancy agreement already prohibited storing these items: “Self-storage units are not safe deposit boxes.”

“Licensing wasn’t an issue—you need a license for everything in New York, even dog walkers,” said Coakley. “Otherwise, these were calls for pricing transparency, 60-day notices for rent increases, and a few other basic things that really weren’t onerous at all. Not that we’re thrilled self-storage is being targeted, but again, [it’s] pretty straightforward stuff.”

Steckler and Coakley then provided a little more context around their issues with the proposed schedule of rates. Their legal argument was that the lease already has that information; if a potential tenant didn’t like it, they didn’t need to sign it. But the DCWP wanted this schedule published before reviewing the lease and hadn’t clearly defined what would be provided. They also elaborated on the idea of comparing self-storage to living space. “Once one rule makes a correlation to livable space, such as applying residential allergen hazard concepts to self-storage, other rules may do the same,” said Steckler. “Then what comes next, rent control? It’s a slippery slope, so we need to make sure self-storage continues to be characterized properly.”

Steckler also questioned how the complaints that sparked the Extra Space lawsuit had been handled. “Much of that lawsuit was based on unvalidated 3-1-1 complaints [non-emergency complaints that, among other things, may include landlord maintenance issues, mold, and pest infestations]. I would say these were not properly investigated, the complaint was extremely vague, and in most cases the operator wasn’t properly notified. From what I saw, they read more like someone had a bad cup of coffee at a diner versus a legitimate complaint.”

Coakley agreed, stating many of the allegations likely could have been rectified with a simple conversation had any type of outreach been done. “We wish they would open a case, contact you, and the operator could resolve it. That’s not what happens, but it would certainly save us all a lot of headache.”

Giving Coakley some cause for optimism was the outcome the NYSSA achieved when previously fighting local laws drafted by the city council. As originally written, they were much more burdensome and potentially damaging to the industry. The NYSSA was able to work with both the council and bill sponsors to reframe and redraft the laws into something much closer to something the industry could live with. In fact, the council even created a separate section in the general obligation law redefining self-storage so that it wasn’t lumped in with storage warehouses and other unsimilar entities. “If we can do that again, we may not have to take this to court,” said Coakley. “Of course, I think the City Council was a little more business friendly. The challenges we have are with the DCWP, which issues and governs the licenses themselves, and our concern lies in the language of those rules.”

Without knowing what the outcome would be, Steckler’s recommendation that NYC operators apply for their business license as soon as possible would prove prescient. “I don’t believe there’s any expectation that if the rules are adopted on August 25th, operators must be in full compliance on the 26th, but it doesn’t hurt to prepare. We’re also recommending they start looking at pricing transparency—how they present things to the customer, how they communicate the deal, and when the deal expires.”

Ultimately, Coakley felt there should be accountability on both sides. “The consumer must be held accountable for entering into an agreement, and the operator must be accountable for the way it was drafted. In this current administration, the balance has shifted, with too much onus falling on the operator side.”

“There’s a contractual relationship with tenants, but it’s month to month,” added Steckler. “The customer can always pack up and leave without a moment’s notice, so there needs to be more education on that, which is a goal of the NYSSA.”

Before signing off the call, Steckler and Coakley made it clear that if things went sideways the NYSSA was prepared to take legal action against the city. “We’ve already sought legal counsel,” said Steckler. “We’re not looking to pick a fight if we don’t have to; a lawsuit is the least desirable action. We’d rather sit at the table, negotiate, and come to an agreement. But if there’s no compromise, we will have to challenge regulations that we believe are simply not appropriate for the industry.”

Maurice Pogoda, president and founder of National Storage Management, zeroed in on the pricing transparency aspect of the rules. He had been very vocal about this in the past and his position hadn’t changed. “I’ve been saying for years that some of the industry’s increasingly aggressive ECRI practices would eventually attract unwanted attention from regulators.”

While Pogoda said he believed dynamic pricing was a legitimate business tool, and New York perhaps an extreme example, there comes a point where customers begin to feel they’re being treated unfairly. “Look, the vast majority of self-storage operators are responsible business owners that provide a valuable service and treat their customers fairly. My hope is that this situation encourages our industry to strike a better balance between maximizing revenue and maintaining transparency, fairness, and customer goodwill.”

John Lindsey, co-founder and president of Lindsey Self Storage Group, said the $1.7 million message Mayor Mamdani and the DCWP sent the industry should be a wake-up call to some operators. “Self-storage has become essential infrastructure for people navigating moves, downsizing, divorce, and disaster recovery,” he said. “That role comes with a level of trust that has to be earned, and this settlement is a reminder that cities are increasingly willing to step in when it isn’t.”

ECRIs have now become a regulatory and reputational liability, Lindsey added, not just a source of customer complaints. He also speculated that, regardless of the NYC outcome, facility and unit maintenance could increasingly transform what was a purely operational issue into a potential source of litigation. “Operators across the country should get ahead of this now. NYC won’t be the last city looking to license this industry.”

U-Haul CEO Joe Shoen, who implemented a one-year rate-lock guarantee in March to separate his business from those he believes engage in deceptive pricing practices, felt the city’s regulatory response up to that point had been proportional to the problem. “We did this to ourselves, and now we’re paying the price because of the REITs’ aggressive pricing strategies,” said Shoen. “This is a customer service business, and we all understood that in the early days of self-storage. But then Wall Street players came in, and now the big guys treat self-storage like a real estate business—a cash cow to be milked.”

Shoen said it was time to deal with the consequences rather than blaming customers or government; he used the recent tainted lettuce outbreak as an analogy. “After hundreds of cases of intestinal illness, the FDA set its sights on Taco Bell. What did Taco Bell do, sue the FDA? No; they issued apologies to the public and implemented new standards of quality control. But when government agencies focus on our largest players, what do they do? They lobby and consider suing the city. I say, clean the lettuce instead!”

Once legislators had taken a bite of the Big Apple, Shoen also predicted other cities would follow suit. “I’m 77 years old and I’m so proud to be part of this industry—I saw it get started. But I can also foresee a time when it’s no longer around if we continue down this path, so I regret not speaking out sooner. These operators who’re digging themselves into a hole: Stop crying about being picked on and put down the shovel.”

A final perspective came from RK Kliebenstein, who told MSM in a March interview that customers complaining about ECRIs could have chosen an operator that was going to give them a one-year price guarantee, but they wanted the discount. “We learn in exit interviews that most people don’t think they’re going to stay very long. When they do and the price goes up, they look for someone to blame. Publicly traded companies are beholden to analysts and shareholders, so they execute accordingly. They’ve been able to convert a good majority of customers into higher-paying tenants with introductory pricing, so the proof is in the pudding.”

In the end, a handful of concerns were addressed and others resulted in compromise. However, several of the industry’s most central objections were rejected outright.

Unsurprisingly, the fundamental licensing and pricing-transparency requirements remained fully intact. This includes giving tenants at least 60 days’ notice prior to a rate hike and prohibiting the collection of fees not included in the schedule of rates without prior notice. These provisions had been established by the underlying laws and were never seriously in dispute.

The department did, however, make 11 changes following the public comment period. A few were clear victories, for example, eliminating the simple cancellation mechanism and removing targeted promotions from the master schedule of rates.

Other concerns resulted in compromise. Rather than broadly allowing delinquent tenants access to retrieve “essential goods,” the final rules were defined and limited to prescription medications and government identification, with facility staff having the ability to retrieve the items rather than providing access to the unit.

Cleanliness requirements were similarly softened but survived. Certifications that had been required weekly must instead be performed monthly, and remediation may be completed by a third party. But the industry’s larger objection to applying residential allergen standards to self-storage went nowhere. “The Department disagrees,” the DCWP stated, reasoning that because household goods travel between storage facilities and residences, the same policy should apply.

Operators didn’t fare much better on pricing. The DCWP clarified the previously vague schedule-of-rates requirement by creating separate consumer and master schedules, but retained the requirement that operators disclose the maximum occupancy fee a tenant could face during the following 12 months. It also rejected concerns that pricing disclosures could have anticompetitive effects, stating that transparency promotes competition and allows consumers to compare operators’ histories of price increases.

Recordkeeping requirements remain extensive, with the caveat that operators no longer must produce records “immediately” upon request. And while the DCWP narrowed the retrieval provision for tenants in default, it rejected arguments that the final rule conflicts with New York’s Lien Law.

Perhaps the biggest blow was the department’s rejection of the industry’s assertion that many of the regulations exceeded the authority granted to it under Laws 162 and 171. The DCWP maintained that the licensing laws gave it broader regulatory authority under the city’s Administrative Code and that existing consumer-protection law provided additional authority to prohibit unfair trade practices.

In short, the industry was able to change how several regulations will work, but it was unable to change what the DCWP intends to regulate.

“Given that DCWP did not take into account the bulk of our concerns, we prefer not to comment further at this point, except to say we are considering our options to ensure we are protecting the best interests of our industry,” Coakley responded via email.

It’s a pivotal moment for self-storage, and operators across the country will be watching closely to see what happens next. From the sounds of it, the dust may not be settled after all.

t is no secret that competition in lease-up has never been fiercer than it is today. Supply has drastically increased in most markets, with a race to the finish line, and customers are savvier than ever. In that environment, the operators who win lease-up have one habit in common: They treat marketing as a necessary early decision, not a last-minute task.

One of the primary shifts in addressing a strained market, or trying to hit lease-up projections, is that marketing your facility should start the moment you close the deal—whether that is raw land or an existing site under new ownership—not simply waiting until a few days before you open. When your facility does open its doors, the advantages that early marketing creates have either been built or lost. This guide explains why timing matters so much and what your marketing should be doing at each stage of development.

When you wait until opening to begin, you arrive at your most important moment—your lease-up time clock—with no search visibility, no local awareness, no captured leads, and no established position in the market. Competitors who started earlier have already claimed that ground. The work didn’t disappear; it just got compressed into the weeks when you can least afford to be invisible. Additionally, construction and/or onboarding a new facility can be an all-hands-on-deck event, where it pays to have your team involved from the earliest point.

housands of self-storage facilities across North America are now entering their third decade of operation. While many continue to perform well, age often brings new challenges that can quietly erode profitability long before they become obvious on a balance sheet.

Owners frequently focus on occupancy as the primary measure of success, but occupancy alone rarely tells the whole story. An outdated unit mix, aging infrastructure, or underutilized property can all limit rental rates, increase operating costs, and reduce asset value—even at facilities that appear healthy.

As competition increases and customer expectations continue to evolve, modernization is becoming less about aesthetics and more about protecting long-term returns. Operators willing to evaluate their properties strategically often discover opportunities to improve same-store revenue.

Start by asking a simple question: Is your facility still designed for today’s customer?

Many self-storage properties were designed 20 or 30 years ago based on customer demand that looked very different from today’s market.

Household sizes have changed. Small businesses use storage differently. Climate-controlled space has expanded dramatically. Customers increasingly expect convenience, technology, and security alongside traditional storage, yet many facilities still operate with the same unit configuration and security tools they opened with decades ago. That can create an expensive mismatch between inventory and demand.

Facilities commonly find themselves with excess inventory in slower-moving unit sizes while consistently selling out of others. Rather than leaving units vacant, operators often resort to discounting rates to move inventory.

Those discounts add up quickly.

The first step is analysis. Operators review:

• Which unit sizes consistently require discounts,
• Which units remain vacant for extended periods,
• Average length of stay by unit type,
• Waiting lists for popular sizes, and
• Customer inquiries that cannot be fulfilled.

Patterns in this data often reveal opportunities to reconfigure existing space rather than simply accepting lower performance.

In many cases, converting smaller units into larger, higher-demand spaces—or vice versa, depending on the market—can increase both occupancy and rental revenue without expanding the building footprint.

When in doubt, many operators turn to experienced teams of renovation experts that will perform site visits and help with the analysis. From door replacements to unit remixes to office remodels, working with experienced teams often garners superior results with minimal operational disruption.

Aging doors do more than affect appearance. The physical condition of a facility has become increasingly important in competitive markets. Customers shopping online often compare multiple facilities before visiting in person. Once they arrive, the condition of the property strongly influences perceptions of quality, security, and professionalism.

Storage doors play an outsized role in that impression. Since doors represent much of what customers actually see and interact with, deteriorating or damaged doors can create concerns about security and maintenance before a rental conversation even begins.

Replacing dated doors with industry leading roll-up doors can improve:

• Tenant experience through smoother operation,
• Unit security and aid in the prevention of common theft attempts,
• Weather resistance,
• Maintenance requirements, and
• Overall curb appeal.

Industry concern about theft continues to rise, with many operators citing break-ins as one of their biggest operational challenges. Criminals frequently target facilities with outdated security or damaged doors that appear easier to breach.

When evaluating existing doors, look for warning signs like:

• Damaged or bent curtain sections,
• Repeated spring failures,
• Doors that are difficult to open,
• Poor tension or inconsistent operation, and
• Doors that regularly come off track.

Ignoring these issues isn’t simply an operational inconvenience—it can become a liability if equipment fails or creates safety hazards for customers or employees.

Modernization also creates opportunities for better security. Many renovation projects now combine physical improvements with technology upgrades. Smart locking systems, LED lighting, enhanced camera systems, and AI-enhanced monitoring tools have become increasingly common components of renovation projects. Beyond improving customer convenience, these technologies can reduce operational complexity while helping deter unauthorized access.

For many operators, modernization isn’t about replacing one product with another—it’s about using renovation projects to improve the overall customer experience while strengthening property security.

• Oversized manager apartments,
• Underused office space,
• Uncovered parking, and
• Vacant land.

Rather than accepting these areas as fixed assets, successful operators increasingly evaluate how each square foot contributes to overall property performance.

• Modern leasing offices,
• Additional rentable units,
• Customer service centers,
• Self-service rental spaces, and
• Hybrid retail or business-use areas.

Similarly, outdoor parking areas may generate relatively modest revenue compared with alternative uses.

Some operators have increased property productivity by converting portions of underperforming outdoor space into additional rentable storage inventory using relocatable storage structures, allowing them to increase revenue while avoiding much of the complexity associated with traditional ground-up construction.

Modern customers expect more than storage space. Facility upgrades increasingly influence more than occupancy.

Customers today evaluate:

• Security,
• Convenience,
• Technology,
• Cleanliness,
• Professional appearance, and
• Ease of access.

A modern office, refreshed signage, updated lighting, improved landscaping, and well-maintained buildings all contribute to customer confidence. These improvements can also support stronger online reviews, better first impressions, and greater pricing power in competitive markets.

One concern many owners share is the fear that renovation projects will interrupt operations or displace existing tenants, but renovation doesn’t have to mean disruption.

While every project differs, experienced planning can often minimize disruption. Successful renovation projects typically begin with a comprehensive facility assessment rather than isolated repairs. Instead of replacing individual components as they fail, operators increasingly evaluate the entire property to determine where investments will generate the greatest return. That approach allows owners to prioritize improvements based on revenue potential rather than urgency alone.

The question isn’t whether owners will spend money on their properties. The question is whether those dollars will simply maintain the status quo—or create measurable improvements in revenue, customer satisfaction, and asset value.

For many operators, modernization represents an opportunity to reposition an aging facility rather than to slowly and quietly leak revenue, which ultimately impacts the property value.

By evaluating unit mix, investing strategically in infrastructure, strengthening security, and identifying underutilized space, owners can often unlock significant value that has been sitting within the existing property for years.

As the self-storage industry continues to evolve, the facilities that remain competitive will be those that regularly reassess how well their physical assets align with today’s customers—not the customers they were originally built to serve.

ocated on the western edge of Montreal, Kirkland is one of Quebec’s most desirable communities, with a mix of residential neighborhoods, retail corridors, and corporate campuses. It was the perfect location for Pandora Self Storage, but getting there wasn’t easy due to strict permitting requirements. Persistence paid off, and today the facility is the first-ever self-storage development in Kirkland.

Developed by Robert Vineberg in partnership with Broccolini, one of Canada’s largest privately owned developers, the five-story Class-A property sits along the heavily traveled Trans-Canada Highway, giving Pandora exceptional visibility—although, at 150,000 square feet, it would be hard to miss on its own. The Zero Carbon Design Certified facility boasts 1,000-plus drive-up, dock-level, and interior storage units, as well as a coworking component with 15 offices and three boardrooms.

Working with architects and urban planners, the team created a bespoke design that’s functional, attractive, and future-ready. The result is a facility wrapped in custom-fabricated copper-colored panels and curtain wall glazing, which provides the appearance of a modern commercial building rather than a conventional storage facility.

The property is already more than 25 percent leased by units, ahead of underwritten absorption estimates.

“One advantage of starting from scratch is that our leadership team could take their collective experience of successes and failures and apply them to our platform,” says Vineberg. “There were no legacy systems or procedures we were forced to live with.”

That philosophy extends to both operations and marketing. Pandora emphasizes employee training, professional development, and a collaborative culture, while its marketing strategy combines digital best practices, social media, community involvement, and advertising with a little tongue-in-cheek humor.

With a prominent location, a distinctive design, strong sustainability credentials, and a carefully considered customer experience, Pandora Self-Storage has made an ambitious debut in Kirkland. More than just the company’s flagship, the facility represents a new chapter for self-storage in a market that once refused to allow it at all.

ast month, we pulled the curtain back on why people use self-storage, revealing that for many tenants, it isn’t just about space but rather preservation of possessions, memory, and identity. It’s the basis for disposition—the natural human instinct to hold onto what is ours—and it’s the D that comes before those we’ve always known: death, divorce, downsizing, and displacement. While those four may create the need for storage, disposition helps explain why our belongings find a home behind a roll-up door instead of earning a spot on Facebook Marketplace, at Goodwill, or in a dumpster. It’s also why tenants may spend thousands of dollars storing things worth a fraction of the rent.

Now, with another assist from Dr. Russell Belk, research professor and author of Possessions and the Extended Self, we’ll look at how disposition applies across each of the four Ds, and how very different circumstances can lead tenants to make the same decision: Put it in storage.

Because of this, parting with those belongings can often feel like a betrayal. “I had to go through my mother’s stuff when she passed, and while some items were meaningful, most had no significance to me other than that they had belonged to her,” Belk told MSM. “Still, since I knew they were important to her, the thought of throwing them out felt disloyal. I definitely had a twinge of guilt when I tossed that stuff in the dumpster.”

Novelist Stephanie Danler (Sweetbitter, Stray) told TIME magazine that when she and her husband separated, they packed up their home and put the boxes into storage. She didn’t think it’d be permanent, but temporary turned into years, and it became clear it was over. “I felt like I had been much younger when I packed them,” she said when finally opening the boxes. “The first box I opened had sweaters in it. His and mine. I remember taping up that box and thinking that we were separating, but we would be unpacking this box before the next snow came … It hurt afresh to see it all again. I still loved him. He still loved me. We wept constantly.”

Amanda Titchenal, the founder of professional organizing company Well Organized, doesn’t necessarily encourage storage but does recommend it when clients refuse to part with certain belongings. However, she has some rules and tells clients their home should only hold things they use regularly. “If you need to get storage, make sure it is for specific purposes and not just a place to dump things,” she says, adding that for the ultra-sentimental it’s OK to relocate special keepsakes to storage if they’re creating too much clutter in the home.

Amber Campbell would likely agree. In a recent Business Insider story, she writes about going from a furnished townhouse to traveling with two suitcases after losing her job. She describes having associated her possessions with security and identity, which made downsizing emotionally difficult. “[It] forced me to question who I was without my stuff,” recalls Campbell. “I was so anxious about letting go that I packed my storage unit like a Tetris puzzle … That’s when it hit me how much of my life I’d spent defining myself by my stuff. They were all evidence that I’d become the person I always wanted to be.”

But disaster isn’t the only reason people lose their home permanently or temporarily. Moves often occur due to eviction, foreclosure, military deployment, or job and lifestyle changes, and they almost always create temporary chaos that can strongly activate disposition. During a disruptive move, deciding what to discard may take a back seat to simply getting belongings somewhere safe. What begins as a temporary storage solution can then outlast the displacement that created it.

In a first-person account published by Invisible People, a woman describes realizing she was about to become homeless after the end of a 10-year relationship. Before moving into her vehicle, she packed the possessions she wanted to keep into a storage unit. While living in her vehicle, the unit became the closest thing she had to a home for her belongings. She could retrieve clothes and necessities as she needed them and even use it to rotate seasonal items.

So, while the circumstances may differ, the decision is the same: keep, sell, donate, discard, or store. What makes storage so appealing is that it sells something beyond space: time before a permanent decision must be made. That’s good news for self-storage operators. What’s even better news is that although the world has been slowly digitizing what we used to hold in our hands, many people will still want to keep physical possessions.

“Today, music, movies, photos—they’re all stored digitally. People no longer write letters, but emails,” says Belk. “All of that saves space in the home, but it doesn’t diminish disposition. Those old records and tapes, those faded photos and letters—they’re too good to throw out. And so, storage remains as a place to keep our past in the present.”

sk a storage operator what customers care about most and the answers come quickly: price, location, security, access. All of it matters. But after years of running facilities and listening to the people who rent from them, I’ve come to believe a quieter factor shapes most of their decisions, one that almost never appears on a website or a rate sheet. It’s trust, or more often, the absence of it.

Our industry spent decades teaching customers to read every offer with suspicion. Along the way, a lot of operators stopped competing on transparency and started competing on how well they could disguise the real cost of renting a unit. I think of the result as a trust tax. It never shows up as a line item next to rent or insurance or late fees, but tenants pay it constantly in uncertainty, in low-grade frustration, and in the growing attention they pay to which operators make them carry it at all.

The trust tax wasn’t designed. It accumulated, one small decision at a time, repeated across thousands of facilities. A rate advertised online turns into a higher rate after fees. Teaser pricing vanishes a few months in. Increases arrive aggressively after move-in. Cancellation requires a phone call during narrow office hours. Lease terms run long and unclear, with the parts that matter buried in fine print. No single tactic looks like much. Together they’ve built an environment where customers simply assume they aren’t getting the whole story.

That assumption is the problem, and it’s worth being precise about why. Tenants aren’t naive about price increases or policies. Most people accept that a business needs to make money. What they resist is the surprise—the sense that something was kept from them until it was too late to matter.

Because acquiring a customer and keeping one are different problems.

Attractive-looking pricing fills units quickly and is easy to copy. Holding those tenants is the hard part. Every unexpected fee, every surprise increase, every cancellation that feels like a trap leaves a residue, and that residue doesn’t evaporate when the customer vacates. It turns into reviews, word-of-mouth marketing, and the reputation that trails a facility for years.

The operators who win the next decade won’t be the ones who perfected the fine print. They’ll be the ones who made it unnecessary.

The part operators tend to miss is that none of this requires charging less. It requires honesty. Most people would rather hear an uncomfortable truth on day one than discover it in month four.

They notice those patterns instantly, and the backlash against them isn’t confined to storage. Operators aren’t only competing with the facility down the road. They’re competing with every clean, transparent experience their customers have everywhere else—each one raises the bar.

When tenants consistently describe a place as straightforward and honest, that reputation becomes an asset that compounds quietly through referrals and goodwill. The facilities earning trust now are building an advantage that gets harder to copy.

Online rentals let customers see pricing before they ever show up. Digital leases make terms easy to review. Automated messaging keeps communication consistent, and customer portals put information within reach. Done well, technology doesn’t just automate the back office. It makes a facility feel more trustworthy, and that’s an opportunity the industry has barely started to use.

A facility can have strong security, modern amenities, and a great location and still squander some of that advantage if using the place is a chore. The easiest businesses to trust tend to be the easiest businesses to use, and that’s no accident.

The operators who come out ahead won’t necessarily be the cheapest, the newest, or the best funded—they’ll be the ones who understood that trust had become a measurable asset. Customers remember how a business made them feel, whether the pricing felt fair, whether the communication felt honest, and whether the whole experience was easy.

As facilities start to look more and more alike, that memory becomes one of the few things that sets one apart.

The facilities building durable value are also building trust by reducing surprises, simplifying the experience, and respecting a customer’s time and attention. That work rarely shows up on next month’s report. It shows up later in retention, reviews, referrals, and eventually revenue.

The trust tax exists because customers have been trained to expect it—to assume another fee or increase or complication is waiting somewhere under the surface. That’s not their failing. It’s the industry’s, and that makes it something the industry can fix.

Every operator can remove a little more friction, explain pricing a little more plainly, and make the experience feel a little more honest. The ones who do it consistently will earn more than customers. They’ll earn confidence, and in the next decade of self-storage, confidence may be the most valuable thing we sell.

he self-storage industry’s high recession resistance and consistent cash flow are attracting the interest of private equity (PE) investors intent on acquiring fragmented, independent facilities. Could PE be the answer to the current economic situation of the self-storage industry?

Most PE firms serve as advisors to the businesses they’ve acquired, helping iron out inefficiencies, develop new leadership teams, launch new services, and find new avenues for the business to grow and profit.

Private equity is an umbrella term that can take many forms, usually depending on the targeted business’ situation. In general, PE encompasses:

• Leveraged Buyouts (LBOs) – Acquiring a controlling stake in a business using a significant amount of borrowed money (debt) and using the acquired operation’s cash flow to pay off that debt.
• Venture Capital – PE provides the funds and the support needed by early-stage, high-growth startups and small businesses that lack access to conventional capital sources.
• Distressed/Turnaround – In these situations, the PE firm buys underperforming or financially troubled businesses with the goal of restructuring their operations and returning them to profitability.
• Growth Equity – Probably the most common approach for a PE firm involves investing in mature businesses that need capital in order to expand, restructure, or enter new markets, usually without taking a full controlling interest in the targeted business.

For many self-storage owners, a PE sale provides an exit strategy and opens the door to thinking about succession planning. Acquisition by a PE firm reduces the operation’s dependence on the owner by bringing in new management. But is the potential for more tenants, increased revenue, or reduced expenses worth it?

Whether a sale occurs or an investment is made by a PE firm is a question that can only be answered with more questions, such as:

• What are the PE firm’s plans for the business?
• Is a sale the right path for the business and the owner’s exit strategy?
• How will the operation’s employees be treated?
• Will the acquired business continue to support the local community?

Valuing the self-storage business requires analyzing what it owns and how much revenue it generates. What is owned is fairly straightforward and includes capital assets, real estate, etc.—all offset by liabilities, of course.

A business is usually worth far more than the sum of its parts. There is, after all, the value of intangibles such as the customer base, the operation’s reputation for quality, customer service, and more that fall under the heading of “goodwill.”

Analyzing the operation’s cash-flow is often an effective valuation alternative. An operation’s revenue stream generally reveals many of those intangible assets such as goodwill. In fact, for most businesses, analyzing the revenue stream will have the greatest impact on its value.

Self-storage businesses typically value between $100 to $150 per rentable square foot or $1,000 to $3,000 per unit. Stabilized facilities trade at 12 times to 18 times EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization), which is equivalent to 5.5 percent to 7.0 percent cap rates. Small or un-stabilized properties trade at 4 times to 8 times EBITDA (or five to eight times net operating income).

A cap rate (capitalization rate) is a metric that measures the expected annual return on an investment property. It is calculated by dividing a property’s net operating income (NOI) by its current market value or purchase price.

Another option when valuing a self-storage business involves analyzing recent sales of comparable operations. Although this is an “evidence-based” value analysis, it is usually focused on specific factors and industry trends unrelated to the business. Interest rates and market volatility are often neglected variables.

Every PE transaction involves so-called “cultural aspects.” Negotiations here may often result in the business maintaining its identity and even its unique culture. However, there should always be a clear understanding of the desired goals and what is and isn’t on the negotiating table.

Financing, especially debt financing, plays a key role in every PE transaction. Usually, debt financing is a significant part of the transaction with leverage utilized because of the expectation that the improved performance of the self-storage business will ensure repayment of the debt.

Fortunately, while the acquiring PE firm may influence the decision-making process, day-to-day operations are usually left in the hands of the existing management team in order to maintain the appearance of independence. Collaboration between both the PE firm and management is crucial during the transition period.

PE firms are no different than most buyers in seeking greater depreciation write-offs. This usually means purchasing the operation’s assets rather than the self-storage business itself.

Sellers, on the other hand, usually prefer selling the business, or ownership shares, rather than the operation’s assets in order to reap better tax results. Fortunately, with negotiations, an agreement can be reached that satisfies the tax considerations of all concerned.

Operationally, the owner must consider how involved she is willing to remain. The buyer may offer an earn-out to the current owner for staying on for a period of time to ensure a smooth transition. After all, who’s better equipped to ensure that customers aren’t lost, employees remain, etc., than the current owner?

Obviously, with every sale, there are obstacles that must be overcome, some of which may actually be uncontrollable. A good example is when the seller does not want to continue his or her relationship with the business after the sale. Not only does it have a potential impact on the future success or failure of the business, but it also often affects the percentage of the sale price paid in cash.

Private equity firms frequently implement so-called “dynamic pricing” algorithms (like those used by public REITs). While this can maximize short-term revenue, it often involves jacking up rental rates on existing tenants by 10 percent to 20 percent or more, leading to higher churn and damaging local community trust.

Plus, many PE firms rely on leveraged debt to acquire and upgrade portfolios. In a volatile rate environment, the debt service on these massive acquisitions can quickly cut into net operating income, triggering cash-flow issues.

While the financial benefits are appealing, and the hurdles usually negotiable, is the promise of an improved operation with greater profit potential worth a private equity deal?

lat roofs are a popular, cost-effective choice for storage facilities because they offer lower construction costs, easier maintenance access, and usable space for HVAC units. The flat, stable, and safe surface makes it easier for repair crews to inspect and maintain the roof, reducing labor time and costs.

Flat roofs can accommodate a wide range of roofing materials, from built-up roofing (BUR) to single-ply membranes such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC), as well as metal, concrete, and thermoplastic polyolefin single-ply membrane, for example, and are often designed with a slight slope to facilitate water drainage.

Proper drainage systems can effectively direct rainwater away from the roof, minimizing the risk of leaks and water damage. However, accumulating water finds a weak spot to penetrate into permeable materials or seams that aren’t well-sealed. As water accumulates, it deteriorates most traditional roofing materials: adhesives in single-ply roof systems lose their grip, steel equipment supports are corroded, and oil solvent components of roofing asphalts seep into the water, leaving the remaining membrane brittle, cracked, and leaking as the pond grows, thus accelerating the roof’s aging. Ponding also adds more weight onto the roof and unfortunately remains until the water evaporates.

Fortunately, a spray polyurethane foam (SPF) roofing system builds resilience into the structure. The seamless, fully adhered, insulated membrane combines slope, insulation, and waterproofing in one field-applied system, becoming the evolution of the modern roof.

SPF offers a seamless, monolithic barrier, delivering the highest insulation value per inch of any roofing material (R-6.9 per inch). This system corrects poor drainage by varying application thickness, and self-flashes around roof penetrations. Sprayed as a liquid, SPF expands to create a seamless, self-adhering membrane that completely eliminates joints and seams, the most common sources of roof leaks. It’s easy for professionals to install, it’s affordable (numerous studies have shown that the ROI on spray foam systems can happen in as little as five years or less in energy cost reduction), and it has superior longevity over other roofing systems. But property owners might not know how much protection an SPF roof can provide for their building. For example:

• Durability – One of the best features of spray foam is that it insulates the building, mitigating excessive expansion and contraction due to changing outside temperatures. This characteristic gives it unparalleled durability. Contractors can install spray foam in almost any climate or harsh environment and it will hold up well.
• Seamless Surface – SPF is a continuous system that fills in cracks, holes, corners, and along the roof’s base. Spray foam has no exposed seams, so there is less chance for water to penetrate through to the deck. It is a durable cellular insulation that protects the roof from moisture and air. Building owners never have to worry about cracking or splitting in a single-ply membrane.
• Sustainable – SPF as a roofing system is a low-waste and low-labor assembly, providing an efficient installation method with less disposal and minimal tear-off costs. With proper maintenance, the SPF roof system can be renewed at the end of its service life by re-coating the existing elastomeric coating. SPF features ultra-low global warming chemistry that reduces the carbon footprint in its roofing systems.
• Meets Building Codes – SPF is ideal for meeting all commercial building codes. Coated foamed roof assemblies can meet Class-A and Class-B fire performance, which is especially beneficial in metropolitan areas where building codes are stricter.
• Reduces Heat Absorption – Self-storage flat roofs face severe heat absorption challenges due to their large, unshaded surface areas. However, SPF’s insulation and light-colored roofing surface can reduce the amount of air conditioning needed by reflecting considerably more sunlight—and therefore heat—than conventional, dark-colored roofs.

“It’s essential that our buildings’ roofs are waterproof to protect tenants’ important possessions. Talking with the manufacturer’s experienced sales manager helped me understand the entire process that would occur and got the project back on track,” says Barnard.

Prior to applying the SPF system, the team first used a roof vacuum to remove all of the loose gravel and dust; they then applied a waterborne modified acrylic neoprene asphalt primer to promote better foam adhesion and prevent blistering. Next they applied the SPF, which rapidly expanded into a dense, closed-cell insulation and waterproof barrier. And lastly, an acrylic elastomeric top coat was applied over the cured SPF to protect against UV degradation.

“Because the California sun is relentless on roofs and to meet the state’s rigorous sustainability requirements, I knew that this manufacturer’s SFP and acrylic products would be the ideal choice for this project,” says Barnard.

Barnard has been so pleased working with this manufacturer and the results of this project that he will be using SPF for other building retrofits in the future.

f you’re focused on growing your self-storage facility, filling vacant units is only part of the equation. The bigger opportunity is attracting customers who see your property as an essential part of their business.

From contractors and tradespeople to online retailers and local service providers, commercial customers often rent differently from residential tenants. They’re more likely to stay longer, rely on their unit in their daily operations, and expand their storage needs as their business grows.

Building the right commercial tenant mix can make such a difference to your facility’s long-term success. When you understand what your business customers need and position your property as more than just a place to store, you create healthier occupancy and more predictable revenue year-round.

Business customers tend to think differently. They’re renting space because it helps them run their company more efficiently. Whether they’re storing inventory, tools, equipment, or supplies, that unit becomes part of their everyday workflow.

That’s what makes commercial storage tenants such an attractive audience. When your facility becomes part of someone’s business operations, they’re more likely to view you as a long-term partner instead of a short-term solution, which, in the long run, means longer rental periods, more stable income, and stronger customer loyalty.

E-COMMERCE BUSINESSES
If you’ve noticed more online retailers in your area over the last few years, you’re not imagining it. Thousands of entrepreneurs are running successful businesses from home, but many eventually reach a point where spare bedrooms and garages simply aren’t enough. Boxes take over living spaces, inventory becomes disorganized, and shipping supplies pile up—all of which make it hard to find products quickly.

This is when e-commerce storage solutions can make all the difference. A storage unit gives them room to organize inventory, prepare orders, and manage seasonal stock without committing to a long-term commercial lease. If your facility offers clean units, convenient access, and dependable security, you’re already providing many of the features these businesses value most.

CONTRACTORS AND TRADESPEOPLE
Contractors have different priorities, but they also make excellent long-term customers. Whether they’re electricians, plumbers, roofers, landscapers, painters, or HVAC professionals, they need somewhere safe to store expensive tools and materials when they’re not on the job.

Without dedicated storage space, equipment often ends up taking over garages, filling work trucks, or being left in locations that aren’t ideal for security or organization.

Offering contractor storage solutions gives these businesses a reliable place to store everything they need while freeing up valuable space elsewhere. Features like drive-up units, extended access hours, and convenient locations can make your facility an important part of their daily routine.

In other words, help make someone’s workday easier and they’re more likely to stick around.

SERVICE-BASED BUSINESSES
Not every commercial tenant needs to store pallets of inventory.

Many service businesses simply need extra space to support their day-to-day operations. Cleaning companies, event planners, photographers, marketing agencies, and even real estate professionals all have equipment, promotional materials, seasonal items, and files that take up valuable space. For these businesses, self-storage offers flexibility without the expense of leasing additional commercial property.

It’s also an opportunity for you to market your facility as a practical business resource.

INVENTORY-HEAVY SMALL BUSINESSES
Growing retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, and specialty shops often find themselves in an awkward position. They’ve outgrown their existing space but aren’t ready to move into a warehouse.

And so, self-storage for businesses becomes an attractive option. Instead of paying for more square footage than they need, they can rent a storage unit that fits their current inventory while keeping overhead under control. As the business grows, it’s easy to move into a larger unit without the complexity of relocating to a new commercial building. That flexibility is one of self-storage’s biggest advantages, especially for businesses that expect their needs to change over time.

INCREASED REVENUE STABILITY
Commercial customers often rent with a long-term purpose in mind. If they’re using your facility to store inventory, tools, or equipment, they won’t move everything to another location lightly. That often translates into more predictable monthly revenue and fewer unexpected move-outs.

HIGHER OCCUPANCY RATES
When you market exclusively to residential customers, you’re limiting your audience. By also targeting local businesses, you create additional opportunities to fill units throughout the year. Contractors, retailers, online sellers, and service companies all have different storage needs, which helps diversify your customer base and strengthen occupancy over time.

LONGER TENANT RETENTION
Once businesses have organized their unit, established routines, and integrated into your facility, switching to another provider becomes less appealing. Providing excellent service, maintaining a clean property, and understanding your customers’ evolving needs all contribute to retention.

REDUCED SEASONAL FLUCTUATION
Residential demand naturally rises and falls throughout the year, especially during peak moving seasons. Commercial demand is often much steadier. While some industries experience seasonal spikes, many businesses need ongoing access to inventory, equipment, and supplies throughout the year. A balanced commercial tenant mix helps smooth out those fluctuations and creates a more resilient business model.

LOCAL BUSINESS OUTREACH
Some of your best commercial customers may already be operating just a few miles away. Take time to connect with local contractors, retailers, landscaping companies, property managers, real estate professionals, and small business owners in your community. Attend chamber of commerce events, sponsor local business groups, or introduce yourself to nearby companies that could benefit from additional space. Building relationships within your local business community can create a steady stream of referrals while helping position your facility as more than just another storage provider.

DIGITAL MARKETING AND LOCAL SEARCH
Business owners usually start their search online. Your website needs to speak directly to them. If your content focuses only on residential storage, you’re missing an opportunity to reach companies seeking flexible business space. Creating dedicated pages that explain your commercial storage solutions and how they support different industries can help your facility appear in relevant searches. It’s also worth publishing educational content that answers common questions and provides practical advice. Take a look at resources like these small-business storage tips for some ideas.

REFERRAL PARTNERSHIPS
Strong partnerships can become one of your most effective marketing channels. Think about the professionals who regularly work with growing businesses. Commercial real estate agents, business consultants, accountants, moving companies, office furniture suppliers, and local networking organizations all interact with business owners who may need storage. Developing referral relationships with these partners can introduce your facility to customers before they begin searching.

TAILORED COMMERCIAL OFFERINGS
Commercial customers aren’t always looking for the exact same experience as residential renters. Some may need multiple units. Others may need room to grow over time or prefer month-to-month flexibility while their business expands. By offering flexible commercial storage options, convenient access hours, online account management, and a range of unit sizes, you’ll make it easier for businesses to find a solution that fits their operations instead of forcing them into a one-size-fits-all approach.

CUSTOMER SERVICE BEST PRACTICES
Business owners appreciate consistency. When they have a question, they want a quick answer. If they need to transfer to a larger unit or update their account, they expect the process to be simple. A knowledgeable team that understands commercial customers can go a long way toward building trust and encouraging long-term loyalty.

FLEXIBLE LEASING OPTIONS
Businesses change all the time. An online retailer might need additional inventory space before the holiday season. A contractor may temporarily require a second unit for a large project. A local retailer might scale back after clearing seasonal stock. Offering business storage solutions that allow customers to increase or decrease their storage as their needs change makes your facility much more attractive than rigid alternatives.

SECURITY AND ACCESSIBILITY
Commercial customers are trusting you with valuable assets. Whether they’re storing inventory, expensive equipment, tools, or business records, they need confidence that everything will be secure and easy to access. Features like gated access, security monitoring, well-lit facilities, and convenient gate hours don’t just improve the customer experience. They can also become important selling points when businesses compare storage providers.

ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT
Every business wants to feel like a valued customer. Simple check-ins, proactive communication, and helping customers adjust their storage as their business evolves can strengthen relationships and improve retention. The goal isn’t simply to rent a unit—it’s to become a storage partner that businesses can rely on for years.

Some useful metrics include:

• The percentage of commercial customers in your facility,
• Average length of stay for business tenants,
• Revenue generated by commercial accounts,
• Retention rates among commercial customers,
• The number of referrals from local business partnerships, and
• Website inquiries related to commercial storage.

Monitoring these trends gives you valuable insights into what’s working and where you can continue to improve your marketing and customer experience.

If you’re looking for more storage strategies for growing businesses or want to explore how commercial storage can support your customers, learn more about StorageKingUSA’s commercial storage solutions.