Street rate performance worsened in March, despite hope that the busier spring leasing season would bring improvements, according to the latest report from Yardi Matrix.
A team from Yardi Matrix attended the ISS World Expo and Toy Storage Nation Workshop in Las Vegas during the first week of April. The conference offered educational sessions and vendors catering to professionals looking to start or grow a self-storage operation through acquisitions and/or development. Presenters emphasized the challenges the market faces today, including unclear pricing, difficulty obtaining financing and a “race to the bottom” on street rates, particularly among the public companies.
This leasing strategy has made street rate growth as tracked by Yardi increasingly negative in recent months, as the REITs have pushed rates down twice as much as their non-REIT competitors. A lack of transparency into in-place rates has made the acquisition-and-development climate less certain. Yet developers are moving forward with projects, according to Yardi ’s supply data on both recent deliveries and projects under construction.
Year-over-year street rates fall across all top metros
- Annual street rate growth on a national level decelerated further in March. The average annualized same-store asking rent per square foot was $16.25 nationwide for the combined mix of unit sizes and types. This is a 4.5% same-store decrease compared to the national average of $17.21 recorded in March 2023 and a deterioration from -3.8% last month.
- Street rate growth also continued to be negative year-over-year in all of Yardi Matrix’s top metros. Same-store rates for non-climate-controlled (NON CC) and climate-controlled (CC) units combined decreased in all of the top metros in March compared to 12 months prior, ranging from -2.4% in Denver to -7.5% in Atlanta.
- Nationally, Yardi Matrix tracks a total of 3,521 self storage properties in various stages of development, including 877 under construction, 2,055 planned and 589 prospective properties. The share of projects (net rentable square feet) under construction nationwide was equivalent to 3.7% of existing stock as of March, unchanged from the previous month, while trailing 12-month deliveries increased in the past year.
- Yardi Matrix also maintains operational profiles for 30,677 completed self storage facilities in the U.S., bringing the total data set to 34,198. We are happy to announce the release of our new Springfield, Mo., Greenville and Harrisburg storage markets, all of which are now available to Yardi Matrix customers on the subscriber portal.
Get the full report from Yardi.
