After decades of healthy consumer spending in the United States, it should not be a surprise that the self-storage business is doing very well in the country. Of the approximately 58,500 self-storage facilities in the world, 92% are located in the United States. We have accumulated more than we can fit in our homes and as of 2010 an estimated 10% of American households rented space in a self-storage facility in order to house their things.

Primary self-storage facilities—those for whom self-storage services were their primary business—generated revenues of $22.45 billion in the United States in 2011. It is a big business and one that has in recent decades been far more immune to economic cycles than most other businesses. Today’s market size is the actual size, in number of square feet, of interior storage space available in the United States in 1984 and in 2010.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 1984 and 2010
Market size: 289.7 million and 2.24 billion square feet respectively. In per capita terms, we’ve grown from 1.23 square feet worth of storage capacity per person in 1984 to 72.2 square feet per person in 2010.
Source: “Self Storage Association Preamble,” June 2012, a detailed fact sheet on the industry that is presented by the association on its website here.
Original source: Self Storage Association
Posted on September 28, 2012