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

When REITs Show Up, Everything Changes

26 Mar 2026 · 1 min

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When Public Storage, Extra Space, CubeSmart, and Life Storage entered self-storage at scale, they flooded the market with capital and drove up prices, compressing returns. The high-margin deals independent operators once found are now rare. Wealth is still possible in smaller facilities, but the easy money is gone.

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Then the REITs arrived. Public Storage, Extra Space, CubeSmart, Life Storage. They began acquiring at scale. Capital flooded in, competition for assets intensified, prices went up, cap rates compressed, which is good if you own them, and the returns that were available to early operators who were looking for deals became harder and harder to replicate. Today, self-storage in most major markets is institutionally dominated. And that's true. We don't play there. It's not impossible to build wealth in self-storage. In fact, it's very possible. You just have to do it at the smaller facility level. But the easy operator advantage window is, is, is gone.