You are missing the biggest benefit of a self storage business - the appreciation of the underlying real estate. When you dig into the financials of the major self storage businesses you'll see they are essentially REITs that have better cashflow. They can pick an up-and-coming area, do a minimal build-out with low annual overhead, and then down the road when the facility would be needing overhauls and maintenance the underlying property has typically appreciated so much that it dwarfs all other associated revenue streams and makes sense to sell and raze the existing structure. Great business model if you have a long enough timeline.

This is also why some startups trying to revolutionize the self storage model had extreme headwinds - if you are renting the underlying properties and trying to make the storage business profitable you are at an extreme disadvantage to the larger players who can subsidize operating costs with portfolio appreciation.

$80/month that becomes $120/month and then $200/month within a year or two, and they mail you a postcard to tell you about it. I guess that's another nice perk of the business.

There are more self-storage facilities than there are Starbucks, Subways and McDonalds -- combined.

Read that again.

Wendover productions has a great video on the phenomena of self-storage and the economics around this: https://youtu.be/uEVv8SOJ6Is

I know someone in the biz, so two other ways people are making money:

1) Buying land and getting it rezoned for storage and then selling it on -- it's getting harder to get permits to build storage as people get sick of them, so there is a whole economy in knowing how and where to build them and only dealing with the paperwork.

2) Storage unit construction is a huge business now.

Sell the shovels in the gold rush etc.

I used to work at a company that was the industry leader in business management software for storage facility owners. I don't remember exact numbers but a lot of facilities are mom & pop type operations where people basically invested in the business as a retirement plan. It's a surprisingly stable and profitable industry. Economy good? People buy too much crap and want to store it. Economy bad? People have to move and downsize their housing and need to store stuff. Large incentive for tenants to avoid delinquency because they risk their stuff being auctioned off.

You're on the nose. My parent passed shortly after I went to University. It was tough and much easier to put all of her belongings in storage for four years, then it was dealing with it then and there while renting and in between jobs.

I thought the article was predominantly about supply side. There are more quotes from providers than consumers. The article mentions every point you’ve made. You’ve summarized the article bang on.

Suspect it’s far more than $80/month - I was paying that much for a small unit about 30 years ago! (In a LCOL area too!)

Love to see some numbers on what starting up a self-storage runs.

I disagree with the last point -- it's a pain to gather a bunch of things up, put them in vehicles (or rent a truck), find a storage facility that isn't full, rent the unit, haul your things over to the unit.. all the while ignoring that you're putting off whatever culling and disposal ceremony you should actually be engaging in.

My local town gives you two free visits to the garbage transfer station per year. Choosing storage over that seems harder.

You are missing one other issue: it seems easier than it really is. There are only so many people who would use self storage. You see a full self storage place in town and thing you can get a share if you just build one. What you don't understand is demand is not elastic: if you build a second site in town you go from 100 units with 90 used (a good usage rate), do 200 units in town but still only 90 used.

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Demand is outpacing supply, so new supply is serving that unmet demand, not creating it.