The shrinkage of apartment sizes over the last 20 years, coupled with the continuing clamor of workers – especially younger generations – to live in cities, are trends that have seen demand for self-storage grow.
“You go back 20, 25 years, that phenomenon started in major cities like New York and Chicago where every square foot was worth a lot of money and you saw apartments shrinking,” he told Mortgage Professional America. “However, that has expanded out in the market to other areas as well.
“People are willing to take a smaller apartment in order to keep the rent slightly more affordable, so we’ve definitely seen more people living in smaller apartments. People taking [those] apartments are going to use self-storage – store their summer clothes in the winter and winter clothes during the summer, because they simply don’t have a lot of room in their apartment.”
US emerging as a prominent market for self-storage
North America emerged as the largest region in the global self-storage market in 2023, according to ResearchAndMarkets.com, while the space saw a worldwide compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.7% between that year and 2024.
It’s also expected to continue expanding in the years ahead and grow 7.9% per year between now and 2028 to hit a market size of $86.05 billion. That’s due, in part, to high demand for non-conventional storage options, the research firm said, as well as small-scale business expansion and higher demand for climate control.
