It’s that time of year again!
Inside Self-Storage has released its 100 Top Operators (and 50 Top Management Companies).
Last year, we did a comparison of the 2023 list versus the 2010 list. There were a lot of interesting facts to pour over after 13 years, especially considering how much the self storage industry has changed in just the last handful of them!
This year, let’s take a look at the 2024 list and compare it to 2023 to see if we can learn anything new.
In case you’re not in the know, ISS releases a list of top operators and a list of top management companies each year.
The full lists (which you can purchase on ISS’s website here) include a lot of hand details, including how much square footage the company owns or manages, the number of facilities, units, and more.
Ranks are determined solely based on size, with more square footage leading to a higher rank. Operating styles, revenue, and other metrics are not factored into the ranking.
Think of it as a “largest operators” list rather.
Alright! Enough with the setup—let’s get into the meat of it.
While you’ll need to obtain the list from ISS to see the details, we’ve crunched some numbers, made some comparisons, and have come up with a few interesting trends and observations.
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Yes, the largest operators are continuing to grow. This isn’t likely to stop any time soon, if for no other reason than that a larger operation means more capital to play with.
But what does that growth look like? In a year where the pandemic boom had fully cooled and more traditional rental and lease-up trends returned, just how much did the top operators grow?
The number is 2%.
The top 100 operators grew 2% from 2023 to 2024. This is to say, if you take the top 100 operators of 2024 and compare them to the top 100 of 2023 (which don’t necessarily include the exact same operators), the 2024 list has around 2% more total square footage.
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The REITs outpaced others. This shouldn’t surprise any of us, but it’s worth looking at the numbers.
While you could look at the top 100 growing as a sign of consolidation, it’s not very useful without something to compare it to. So let’s compare the REIT data to the top 100 as a whole.
REITs grew by about 10.40%.
On a percentage growth basis—not a raw square footage basis, which would be even more stark a difference—REITs grew about five times faster than the other top 100 (including themselves) combined.
While there is still plenty of room for smaller operators in the industry, it’s impossible to ignore that more and more space is being absorbed by these large national operators.
Taking a moment to compare the Top Owners and Top Management Companies, we can see that management companies seem to be booming.
In fact, the Top 50 Management Companies list grew by 22.51% in managed square feet since the 2023 list. That’s huge!
While most of this growth admittedly comes from REITs—especially Extra Space—we can’t ignore that they still grew about twice as much as the Top Owners even excluding the REIT presence from the management list.
Here are some numbers:
Wow. Even without the REITs on the management list (and INCLUDING them on the owners list), management companies more than doubled the pace of growth compared to owners.
There are a few assumptions we can make about this data:
Some or all may or may not be correct, but it’s an interesting topic to look at!
Let’s congratulate the companies that were added to the top operators lists since 2023!
In total, 15 operators broke into the top 100 owners, and 11 broke into the top 50 management companies.
New Top 100 Owners (alphabetically):
New Top 50 Management Companies (alphabetically):
Congratulations to all of you!
The newest operators on the list aren’t the only ones we should be congratulating.
Here are the top 3 operators in terms of rank improvement:
Here are some of my other favorite posts to check out!
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