ORLANDO, Fla. – No, it’s not your imagination. Self-storage facilities are going up everywhere.
According to Storage Cafe.com, there are more than 50,000 facilities in the U.S.
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By comparison, there are more than 17,000 Starbucks locations, and more than 28,000 Dunkin Donuts locations.
In fact, there is one business with more facilities in the U.S., and it probably won’t shock you. The International Car Wash Association estimates there were more than 62,000 car washes in the U.S. in 2020.
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But we digress. Back to self-storage facilities.
If you’ve been asking yourself, “Who is renting space in all these storage facilities,” we have the answer: Millennials.
OK, not just millennials, but according to Storage Cafe.com’s latest survey, millennials have overtaken Generation Xers with the most people either using self-storage or planning to in the future.
That’s 48% of millennials surveyed, versus 42% of Gen Xers. The number of millennials using self-storage or planning to jumped from 35% last year.
Among boomers, the number is 37%, and for Gen Zers and the Silent Generation, 28% of each group is either using self-storage or is planning to.
Lack of space at home is the top reason why, whether it’s because more people are working from home, smaller apartment sizes or the fact that more people are living with family members. Furniture is the top thing being stored.
Add to this the number of people moving to Florida, and it should be no surprise that Florida is one of the top states for self-storage facilities. In 2023, Florida’s total rentable square footage for storage units increased almost 20% to 6 million square feet, according to Francis Chantree, who authored the most recent study for Storage Cafe.
And Orlando saw the biggest increase year-over-year.
“Orlando in particular keeps going strong with new supply in 2023 hitting 372,413 square feet, the largest annual increase in a Florida city by some margin,” Chantree said. “Miami’s self-storage sector registered the next highest volume of new storage space last year, with around 258,000 square feet, while Jacksonville and St. Petersburg both built between 150,000 and 200,000 square feet.”
Since supply is also up, Storage Cafe says rent prices are also coming down.
“Rents in Orlando fell by almost 15% year-over-year to a current average monthly rate of $104 for standard units,” Chantree said.
A standard storage unit is a non-climate controlled 10′x10′ unit, Chantree explained.
Meanwhile, in 2022, Ocala in Marion County was one of the top cities in the U.S. for sales of self-storage facilities. Ocala came in at No. 2 behind Houston, Texas for sales by square footage, with $166 million. Storage Cafe says many of the units that were sold were newly constructed.
Marion County is the seventh fastest-growing city in the country, according to U.S. News and World Report.
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