Joe DownsCEO & Co-Founder, Belrose Storage Group. Founder, Storage Moguls.

Physical vs Economic Occupancy in Self Storage: What Investors Need to Know

6 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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Self-storage investors need to track economic occupancy, not just physical occupancy. Economic occupancy measures actual revenue after accounting for turnover. As rents rise, owners must fill vacated units quickly at higher rates to keep income growing.

So 2 schools of thought here. And obviously, you know, markets have shifted, rates have shifted, but I think first off, ECRI. So once we're physically occupied, now we're stable, now we're working on economic occupancy. We are doing things that inherently do have an attrition rate. So we're trying to raise the rates and now I need to have still maintain a strong engine so that I can backfill move-outs at these new rates as I do that.