For Morgan Stanley Real Estate, it was a rare first-time investment: Not until June, when its $3 billion Prime Property Fund acquired a majority interest in New Orleansbased Safeguard Storage Properties, did the investment bank’s real estate group deign to invest in the burgeoning self-storage sector.
“We see the underlying demand for this property type as substantial and growing,” says E. Davisson Hardman, who heads Morgan Stanley’s U.S. real estate investments. “We’re happy to be at an early stage of more direct institutional ownership.” Safeguard’s 56 storage facilities in cities around the country encompass 3.2 million square feet.
Long ignored by institutional investors, the self-storage sector is commanding new attention, largely because of relatively attractive pricing and yields. During 2004 self-storage properties nationwide sold at an average 8.6 percent cap rate (a property’s income divided by its purchase price), according to Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Brokerage Co. That compares with an average 6.5 percent for apartment buildings and 7.6 percent for office properties. Like the apartment sector, the self-storage sectoroffers investors income stability and requires minimal improvement expenses.
“When self-storage portfolios come to market, they’re fairly hotly pursued,” says John Fraser, managing director in the New York office of Investcorp, a Bahrain-based investment bank that manages $1.8 billion of U.S. property on behalf of Middle Eastern investors.
Less than a month before the Morgan StanleySafeguard deal, Prudential Real Estate Investors, of Parsippanny, New Jersey, invested $1.5 billion in the sector. Public ownership of self-storage facilities has been expanding, as well. Of the five real estate investment trusts that specialize in the property type, the newest is U-Store-It Trust of Cleveland, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange last October with a $16-a-share IPO that generated $460 million. Its stock recently traded at $18.68.
“Twenty years ago, Pru invested in apartments for the first time, and that was not a main food group,” says Charles Lowrey, CEO of PREI, which has been investing in self-storage in the U.S. and abroad for about six years. “I fully expect this to become a major food group, or at least a major niche sector.”
In the self-storage sector, estimated by PREI to have a value of $120 billion, most properties are owned by local individuals. But as more capital is funneled into the sector -- nearly $800 million of self-storage properties traded during 2004, up 50 percent from 2003 -- cap rates are moving down. The 8.6 rate for 2004 is 50 basis points lower than the average cap rate for the previous years.
Still, more institutional investment is likely. Just ask Charles LeClaire, a senior director in Marcus & Millichap’s Denver office and a broker who specializes in self-storage properties. Ten years ago he might have gotten an assignment to sell a single property locally; today he sells $100 million portfolios of properties throughout the country.
“I’ve seen the business grow from basically a mom-and-pop industry with a couple of REITs,” he says. “We’ve gone from talking to local people to talking to the likes of J.P. Morgan Chase and Prudential. Self-storage is now an accepted product type.”
