Self Storage Rides the Wave of America's Multifamily Growth

from CRE Daily Newsletter

As apartment living grows tighter and taller, Americans are increasingly turning to self storage for a little breathing room — and no state is building more of it than Texas.

Unprecedented growth: The US added 4.1M apartments between 2015 and 2024, nearly 40% of all multifamily units delivered over the past 40 years. As renters prioritize location over size, newer apartments are up to 75 SF smaller than those from the early 2000s.

Space for renters: Meanwhile, the self storage industry has quietly kept pace, adding 547M SF of space over the past decade to reach 2B total SF, meeting demand from a growing renter population and remote workers needing extra space.

The epicenter of expansion: Texas cities are dominating in both multifamily and self storage growth.

· Houston leads with 240K new apartments and 20M SF of storage.

· Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio each added tens of thousands of apartments, alongside millions of square feet of storage.

· Fort Worth built nearly half of its apartments and storage inventory in just the past decade.

Southern cities follow: Sunbelt cities like Atlanta, Charlotte, Orlando, and Miami are mirroring Texas’s trajectory — booming housing markets matched by surging self storage demand. Atlanta and Denver, however, remain undersupplied, with storage inventories well below national benchmarks.

Urban space shortage: California metros like LA and San Diego have strong multifamily growth, but storage development lags, especially in LA, where inventory sits at just 2 SF per capita (vs. the national 7). Seattle is one exception, responding well to shrinking apartments and remote work needs.

➥ THE TAKEAWAY

Expert view: Industry analysts confirm the trend: where apartments go up and unit sizes go down, self storage fills the gap. With storage REITs pulling back on supply and focusing on stabilization, 2025 may bring better balance to an overheated sector.

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