Ivanhoé Cambridge is making its first self-storage investment through a US partnership with Safely Store Self Storage.
The C$77bn (€53.6bn) global real estate subsidiary of Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) has partnered with Safely Store and an unnamed global institutional investor to invest an initial US$400m (€367m) in self-storage assets across the US over the next few years.
The partnership, which has the potential to scale up further over time, expects to focus on tier-one and two markets by investing in a combination of ground-up developments, redevelopments and acquisitions of lease-up projects and undermanaged operational assets.
Michael Neuman, head of industrial in the US and Latin America at Ivanhoé Cambridge, said: “Self-storage has proven its resilience throughout economic cycles, outperforming almost all other sectors over the short and long term, which makes it an attractive addition to our portfolio as we continually seek diversification in buoyant segments.
“What’s more, this asset class, by its very nature, supports our strong sustainable investment convictions by servicing local communities with a high-quality offering for a low associated carbon footprint.”
Safely Store is a self-storage investment platform formed by the principals of Iron Point Partners and the self-storage platform of Taylor/Theus Holdings.
Ryan Haas, a partner at Iron Point Partners, said: “The Iron Point team is very excited to continue our long-standing relationship with Taylor/Theus through the creation of the Safely Store platform alongside our new partners, Ivanhoé Cambridge and another preeminent, global institutional investor.”
Tyler Colpini, CEO of Safely Store, said: “Our initial, lower leverage capital structure and the ability to adapt to real-time market conditions by investing across the spectrum of self-storage opportunities should allow Safely Store to be uniquely positioned to create a high-quality, national portfolio.
“The self-storage sector is recession resilient and possesses many attractive attributes that typically make the property type inherently lower risk and higher return, including high NOI margins, low capital expenditures, a sticky customer base, and monthly leases that provide a hedge against inflation.”
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