Blackstone's US-focused property trust, BREIT, has agreed to acquire self-storage operator Simply Self Storage for approximately $1.2 bn (€1 bn) from Brookfield Asset Management.
According to Blackstone, Simply Self Storage is one of the top five private owners of self-storage and operates a portfolio totaling 8 million ft2 (740,000 m2) across the US.
BREIT currently owns a $300 mln portfolio of self-storage facilities. Fllowing the acquisition, it will become the third largest non-listed owner of storage in the US.
Frank Cohen, chairman and CEO of BREIT, said: 'This transaction is a complementary addition to BREIT’s high-quality portfolio of income-generating real estate, which is heavily weighted towards logistics and multifamily primarily in growth markets.
'Simply Self Storage is a best-in-class company with significant potential for growth through future acquisitions in a highly fragmented sector, and similar to logistics, self-storage is a resilient sector through economic cycles because of low tenant turnover, minimal maintenance costs and stable cash flows. We look forward to continuing to acquire high quality assets on behalf of our BREIT investors.'
Brookfield acquired Simply Self Storage in 2016 in one of its opportunistic real estate funds. Since that time, Brookfield more than doubled the size of the company and helped transform the business into a fully-integrated institutional platform, according to the firm.
The Blackstone deal mirrors renewed activity in this niche in Europe, with both Heitman and Moorfield snapping up self-storage units in the UK this month. While Heitman inked a deal for 10-asset firm Space Station, Moorfield has launched a self-storage JV with South African REIT Stor-Age to build a multi-million portfolio of self-storage assets.
