All around the world, people are accumulating more and more stuff, without having anywhere to put it. So it should come as no surprise that the self-storage industry has boomed, growing more than 7 percent annually since 2012 and raking in about $38 billion USD a year in rental sales. In the United States, this trend can partly be attributed to older people fleeing the cold in the Midwest and Northeast, and downsizing to smaller homes in warmer parts of the country. But instead of selling the belongings they’ve had for years, it all goes into storage.
You bought it, you store it:
- There are more than 50,000 self-storage facilities in the United States, charging an average of $91.14 USD a month. It’s estimated that one in 11 American households has stuff stashed in one of these units.
- The U.S. self-storage industry saw a $4 billion USD increase in revenue in 2017, and about 800 new facilities are expected to be built in 2018.
- The birth of self-storage in the United States has been traced back to Odessa, Texas, in 1964, when A-1 U-Store-It-U-Lock-It-U-Carry-the-Key began providing oilmen with places where they could store equipment.