Self Storage- Build Now or Wait Two Years?

Self Storage- Build now or Wait Two Years?

We are 100% full at all of our locations. Have extra ground we can build about 500 more drive up, metal units on. Trying to decide whether to Build now or Wait Two years. Prices for erected buildings have gone up about 40% in the last 1 ½ years.

Steel prices- talked with my neighbor who is a Project Manager for a Steel supplier and with an Owner of a Steel Company, who I have done business with for 10 years. They both said to wait till mid 2022 to make a determination. They don’t see steel going down in the near term. Google is building a lot of plants. The Auto industry due to the chip shortage is backlogged for the next two years trying to ramp up production. The economy was already hot 2 years ago and still is. Federal government about to pour $xTrillion onto the economy.

Local Contractors- all of my local contractors are booked into the summer.

Engineering- our engineering firm has projects out into the summer.

Building Manufacturer- says prices won’t go down. Raise rents and build to protect market.

Interest rates- let's say 4%, I can only see them going up.

Supply Chain- Steel from China is fighting to get through the same ships and ports along with toys.

Cargo Containers- You can’t buy a used container now. They are not being sold and are being used to store on backed up ships or in ports for storage. At some point Chinese manufacturers have to quit building steel, if there is no place to put it. This would drive prices up. Or the Shipping will open up driving prices down. Whiplash effect.

Trucking- only so much capacity thus shipping steel has to work its way through, along with other material, thus Chinese steel won’t all of a sudden flood the market lowering the price.

My background is as a Controller/CFO, thus I like to look at scenarios versus just the above Verbage. So, I made an analysis to compare building now or waiting 2 years. This is just an approach to work through the decision. It is not a matter of whether my assumptions are correct or not. They may be correct for my Risk assumptions, but wrong for you. Just change the assumptions and figures.

Used a baseline “Erected Building” investment not including the concrete, roads, fences, electrician, etc. Interest rate assumed going from 4% to 6%. If you think differently, just change the figures.

The analysis below says to wait till prices go down. But in the meantime, do you leave your market open for competitors to build more? Not utilizing the land. We will start to prep the land now. Wait till mid 2022 to decide whether to place orders. If we place an order will probably only install Concrete in 2022 since any Building order Summer of 2022 will probably not get manufactured and then you need a Contractor to erect the building and they will be booked.