History of Self-Storage

History of Self-Storage

Its’ inception came about after World War 2 when the troops came home, and the suburban housing boom took place. These new homes didn’t have basements or attics to storage things. These new homeowners and soldiers needed a place to store their extra belongings. At first, they relied on friends and family but soon the America economy was booming, and everyone has extra “things”.

Some wise entrepreneurs saw this and started to build cinderblock buildings with rollup doors. They would charge people monthly or yearly to rent these spaces. It worked! Except for these cinderblock buildings would require a lot of maintenance, for example filling cracks in the mortar and repainting every several years.

Along came the steel buildings in the 1970’s, however these buildings were made out of thick galvanized steel which tended to rust and show up as a white powdery substance on the surface. Today we still use a galvanized steel but it’s a new generation of thinner, lighter, and more durable than older materials. We also use a powder coating that is baked onto the steel which makes it extremely strong and weather resistant.

Today’s manufactures and builders warranty their products sometimes for 10+ years. Some offer a 40-year warranty on the pre-painted surfaces, 35-year warranty on chalking and color change. Self-storage has come a long way in terms of building materials.

Self-storage has also come a long way in terms of technology at the facility. Today you can find individually alarmed units, remote controlled door locking on each unit, climate-controlled units, and even touchless unlocking of units with your smartphone. More and more technology is taking over, especially during the pandemic. More facilities are going without an onsite manager and more towards automation. More on this in another article.

Today self-storage is a $39.5 billion dollar industry with more then 49,000 facilities in the United States. There is more than 1.9 billion rentable square feet of storage in the US. The average monthly cost for a storage unit is $89.12. Business is up, occupancy is up, and storage rates are starting to recover from the excess of construction of new facilities that have flooded the market in the last 10 years.

It is a good time to be in Self-Storage. Then again, anytime is a good time to be in Self-Storage. Passively or actively.