Ryan Gibson, co-founder and CIO of Spartan Investment Group, was recently interviewed by Real Assets Adviser editor Mike Consol in a podcast. An edited version of that conversation appears below. Listen to the podcast here.
Give us an overview of the self-storage industry.
We had a pandemic boom in 2021 with 96.5 percent occupancy across the industry. Today, in third quarter, average REIT occupancy sits around 90.2 percent — down about 6 percent from just four years ago. The industry really ties into America’s mobility, and we’ve seen Americans become quite immobile over the last year or two because people simply aren’t moving like they used to.
What drives Americans to use self-storage? Is it just that we accumulate too much stuff?
That’s actually one of the biggest misconceptions. While shows like Netflix’s Tidying Up with Marie Kondo play into that narr
