Getting to attend ISS is always a great experience as you are able to catch up with various industry veterans who can lend their own unique perspective on the industry.
Major takeaways from ISS 2023 was that the rising rate hikes have slowed down development and acquisitions volume tremendously. Many people don’t have access to capital at a reasonable rate to move their deals forward. However, the silver lining of this which came up quite a lot in ISS is that there is also less competition for the good deals that are out there. If you are able to come into a deal or development cash heavy there is still a lot of potential to thrive in this environment.
Things are likely to get a bit worse before they get better. It is unclear if the interest rate increases will stop any time soon, so in preparation for the worst people locked into bad deals that are just trying to ride things out until the economy improves should make a contingency plan to bring on an equity partner, oo invest in increasing their facilities overall cashflow through 3rd party management help. People will need to stay proactive and be creative to ride out this rough patch in the industry.
On the highest altitude of the Self Storage industry companies are still full steam ahead. Extra Space Storage and Life Storage are set to merge. SecureSpace Self Storage brand through their affiliate investment adviser raised $1.5 billion for a Self Storage fund, in the end of January 2023 Prime Group Holdings LLC closed the largest fund ever raised focused exclusively on Self Storage at a hard cap of $2.5 Billion. These moves can be interpreted as votes of confidence from industry giants that Self Storage is still a strong asset class to invest in.
