09 Feb 2026
Most industry reports start with conclusions. This one started with discomfort.
As we began assembling the 2026 Radius+ Forecast, one thing became clear very quickly: the self-storage industry is not just "cooling," and it's not collapsing either. It's doing something far less familiar. It's resetting.
That distinction matters.
Over the past decade, self-storage has been conditioned to interpret every slowdown through the same lens. Demand softens, supply eventually follows, and the cycle moves on. But as we dug into four decades of historical data and paired it with what operators, lenders, developers, and investors are actually experiencing on the ground, it became obvious that this cycle does not fit the usual script.
Historically, when demand weakened, it did so briefly. Employment dipped, housing slowed, then mobility returned. Storage followed.
This time, the drivers are different.
What stood out most in the data wasn't a spike in unemployment. It was duration. Employment growth didn't fall off a cliff. It flattened, and then stayed flat. Household mobility slowed, not because people lost jobs en masse, but because they stopped moving. Mortgage lock-in, affordability gaps, and higher transaction friction froze activity across markets.
That nuance shows up everywhere in the numbers, lease-up velocity, move-in rates, and pricing power. Operators aren't mismanaging assets; they're operating in an environment where the core demand engine, mobility, is simply idling.
If there was one surprise that felt almost counterintuitive, it was how quickly supply responded.
After years of development momentum and long pipelines, new construction didn't just slow; it dropped to levels not seen since the industry was coming out of the Financial Crisis. High interest rates mattered, but they weren't the only factor. Rising construction costs, flattened rents, and tighter lending standards converged at the same time.
The result is something the industry rarely experiences: a demand slowdown without an accompanying wave of new deliveries behind it.
That matters more than most headlines suggest.
One of the clearest lessons from this year's Forecast is how misleading national averages have become.
When we ranked the top 100 CBSAs and examined the top and bottom performers, a consistent pattern emerged. Markets that exercised supply discipline, or where development simply couldn't accelerate, are already showing resilience. Others are still working through the consequences of rapid deliveries clustered into short timeframes.
The takeaway isn't that some markets are "good" and others are "bad." It's that timing, product type, and local constraints matter more now than at any point in recent memory. The next phase of the cycle will not lift all markets evenly.
One of the clearest examples of this shift shows up in the urban versus suburban performance split.
Vertical development made sense on paper. Rising land costs, density constraints, and the success of urban multi-story assets pushed that model outward. But the data shows that suburban markets absorbed a disproportionate share of that vertical supply, and they're paying for it now.
Widening rent spreads, slower absorption, and greater volatility aren't being driven by urban cores. They're being driven by suburban oversupply of a product type that doesn't always align with local demand profiles.
That insight didn't come from a single chart. It came from layering pricing, supply, and performance data together and then pressure-testing it with operators who are actually leasing these assets.
Another thing the data made clear is what consolidation is not doing.
It's not accelerating through blockbuster acquisitions.
Instead, it's happening structurally. Through third-party management. Through operational partnerships. Through owners recognizing that sophistication, not scale alone, is what separates survival from strain in this environment.
That shift doesn't show up in transaction headlines, but it shows up in performance dispersion, pricing discipline, and underwriting behavior.
None of this is meant to imply that 2026 will be easy.
But the combination of weakened demand, historically constrained supply, and improving industry discipline creates a setup the industry hasn't seen in a long time. There is limited room for further deterioration without a major external shock. At the same time, the pipeline behind today's softness is thin.
That's not a recovery story yet. It's a positioning story.
And that's ultimately what this Forecast is about. Not predicting the exact month things turn, but understanding why this cycle looks different, where the pressure points really are, and which signals matter most as the industry resets.
If there's one lesson from building this report, it's this: the next phase won't reward broad assumptions. It will reward local understanding, structural awareness, and patience.
That's what the data is quietly saying.
Access the full report to explore the data, market rankings, and insights shaping the next phase of the self-storage cycle: https://hubs.li/Q03_w_yh0
