Thread: REITs Loving Self-Storage! Good for Industry?

This week's real estate investment trust conference in New York has revealed a significant nugget of industry-related information: REITs are high on self-storage right now, as the current players are getting great returns from it.

Diana Olick, covering the conference, wrote this today for CNBC:

"REITs overall are on a tear, with the FTSE NAREIT All Equity REITs Index up 14.13 percent on a total return basis in the first five months of the year.

But when I read down the fact sheet to the winners and losers, imagine my surprise to see the least sexy of the bunch at the top of the list: self-storage."

In the last 12 months, self storage REITs have returned 29 percent. Full story here: http://www.cnbc.com/id/43329496

Conventional wisdom says this is good news for the industry. It means that developers and investors of all sizes will start pumping more resources into building, expanding, remodeling, etc.

That said, are any of you concerned about the possibility of more REITs getting into the market, creating more big operators, and making it tougher on small- and mid-size operations?

I just wanted to provide a little more info on this topic: http://t.co/rowiSCI. It seems that self storage REITs have been outperforming for a while. So I don't believe that there will be a very large surge in REIT investment in self storage. I think the problem comes from the fact that most self storage properties aren't what investors would call 'institutional quality'. I think there will always be room for the small operators in most markets.


Joseph Cacciapaglia
jcacciapaglia@bmccapital.com
713-622-4848
www.USStorageNews.com