Multifamily development naturally creates an increased customer base for self storage. It’s no accident then that storage spaces have been springing up in places where residential development is intense. In the Denver metro area, the apartment boom of the last decade drove self storage construction to new heights. According to RentCafe, an online platform that provides storage unit listings across the nation, the Denver metro area has one of the nation’s fastest-growing apartment markets.
The self storage business now stands at almost 20.2 million square feet in the Denver metro area, with 7 million square feet of space delivered between 2012 and 2021. That’s 35% of the total self storage inventory, according to RentCafe’s most recent research of development trends.
Highlights for the Denver market, courtesy of RentCafe’s self storage division:
- The Denver metro area ranks ninth for self storage and tenth for multifamily construction, adding 7M square feet of new storage space and over 79K new apartments from 2012 to 2021 (35% and 31% of its existing inventories, respectively).
- Newly delivered self storage dropped from a peak of 2M square feet in 2018 to just over 500K square feet last year. Currently, the self storage pipeline counts over 201K square feet set to be delivered in the next 2 years.
- The Denver metro area now enjoys almost 7 square feet of storage space per capita, signaling a mature market, and one of the likely reasons for a decline in new deliveries.
- A 10’x10’ storage unit in Denver is now renting for $136 per month, slightly above the national average street rate of around $130.
RentCafe is an apartment and self storage search website and a part of Yardi. Yardi develops and supports industry-leading investment and property management software for all types and sizes of real estate companies.
