How Much Self-Storage Can I Build on an Acre of Land?

When you are looking at a piece of land, there are so many things that you have to take into consideration to know whether or not it will work for your self-storage project. You need to know if it is zoned correctly or if you can get a zoning change that will allow you to build there; and you need to know if there is enough land to get the square footage that you need.

Zoning is important to your project. If you are going to be a successful self-storage investor, then you should know what zones allow for self-storage. If your lot doesn’t allow for self-storage, then you need to know whether or not the zoning commission will consider a change for that lot.

If they will consider a change, find out how long that might take. They can give you a pretty good guess as to how long it will take once you submit your plans. Some cities are fast and can push it through in 3-6 months. Other cities might be slower, and you are looking at 6 months to a year. Remember this when you are planning out your timetables, especially with interest rates going up.

Once you are pretty sure that you can get the zoning that you need, then you need to look at the land itself. If you have 3 or more acres, you probably have enough land, but we are going to go over how to be sure. If you are looking at something that is less than that, you need to be able to go up in height and you really need to know your rental numbers.

When you buy a property, the purchase price is a constant that you will know. You know how much the seller is asking and you know what you can actually pay for the land. If that is the same, great, if you need to negotiate, get started. When you are looking at a site, you can get roughly 39% of the gross square footage of the land area in self-storage for a single story self-storage facility. This allows for the spacing you will need between buildings. The setbacks the city will require and your roads/driveways. The setbacks may be different in your area so just use this as a rough estimate.

An acre of land is 43,560 square feet. 39% of that is roughly 16,988.4 square feet. So, if you want to build 100,000 square feet of self-storage then you need almost 6 acres of land. However, if you are happy with 51,000 square feet then you can get buy with 3 acres. The other option is to build a multi-story facility.

Most people do not like to rent higher than 3 stories. The higher you go the lower your rates go. That doesn’t mean you can’t build higher; you just need to keep that in mind when you are figuring your numbers.

Start by finding out what your cities setbacks are and then talk to them about road width requirements so that you can get a good estimate of what your rough gross square footage of land will be. If the number is higher than 39%, great, you will have more profit, but if it is less, you don’t want to have a lower return on investment. As always, happy investing.