Moody's Market Snapshot: Self-Storage in the Southwest 2023

The southwest region’s strong self-storage performance over recent years slowed slightly in Q4 2022. Vacancies increased by 1.3% from the previous quarter, rising to 12.1%, while asking-rent growth generally fell 1% to 3% for most categories. Despite these initially disappointing figures, it’s important to contextualize the performance with the knowledge that Q4 is historically the weakest for this industry. The region was in line with national trends in 2022 as well as regional historical ones over the last five years.

The Houston and Dallas metros combine to make up 47% of the southwest region’s self-storage space. These two leading cities found their own markets improving compared to Q4 2021, but slightly behind Q3 2022. At the time of this writing, we’re keeping an eye on Q1 performance. Self-storage usually bounces back in this quarter, showing numbers similar to the prior year’s third quarter. That should help us anticipate where this region is heading.

Moody’s Analytics CRE works alongside members of the self-storage industry to increase the availability of key data that drives business decisions in this rapidly growing asset class. Learn more and get involved at cre.moodysanalytics.com/self-storage-partner-program.