303. Building a Self Storage Facility in 2025: What to Know Before You Start

Self Storage Income

AJ Osborne

Entrepreneurship, Education, Investing, Business, How To

4.9 • 591 Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Building a storage facility may be easier now than it has been in the past five years. With so much of the competition out of the market, top-tier building companies are completing projects faster. And with higher tariffs on pause, now may be one of the best times to lock in pricing before they rise again. But maybe this is your first storage facility construction project or your first facility in general. What should you know BEFORE you start in 2025?

We brought Forge Building Company, the experts in self storage development, back on the show to give a 2025 update. They’re sharing the biggest opportunities for building in the 2025 market, the pitfalls that only experienced developers know to avoid, how to get your project passed by the city, and what’s happened to material costs since the latest round of tariffs.

Development demand has shrunk by a whopping 20% - 30%, so this could be the perfect time to get into the game before rates drop and demand skyrockets back up. Plus, Hamish Bell and Melissa Anderson from Forge even share the new types of “space” modern self storage facilities are adding to increase revenue AND make the city happy.

What you’ll learn in today’s show:

Why the drop-off in self storage development demand could be a good thing for investors
Build now or wait? How to decide when tariffs could boomerang back
Signs that a self storage market is worth building a new facility in
How to get your plans approved by the city and get your inspection passed
Choosing the right unit types for YOUR specific market (do NOT blindly divide your unit mix)

—

Attend the Self Storage Income Live Event! https://www.selfstorageincome.com/live-event

Forging Ahead: Construction Resilience and Opportunity in 2025 - https://forgebuildings.com/forging-ahead-construction-resilience-and-opportunity-in-2025/

Forge Building Company - https://forgebuildings.com/

Interested in Building? Email: Sales@forgebuildings.com

📌 Make self storage management easier than EVER with our podcast sponsor Tenant Inc. - https://www.tenantinc.com/

🎙️ Do you have a great story to share on the SSI podcast? You can now apply here! https://form.asana.com/?k=TGU88eU0bFTFW1iHcckuTA&d=1203571084143207

📖 Get AJ's book that teaches you everything he knows about self-storage https://a.co/d/aRSKcSq

📉 Learn about our current investment opportunities at Cedar Creek Capital: https://cedar.cc/invest

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome everybody to self-storage income and today we have a really important group discussion.
0:07.0	We are in the middle of a major market change.
0:11.0	Development has changed wildly due to the economic conditions and the conditions within the industry.
0:18.0	So where should you be developing? Where should you not be developing?
0:22.6	And what is going on right now a lot of people are confused by. That's why we brought one of the top self-storage developers in the world here to talk about that.
0:40.3	Forge, thank you guys for coming.
0:42.3	Why don't you quickly introduce your guys to the audience.
0:46.3	It's not the first time you've been on.
0:48.3	Yeah, yeah.
0:49.3	Been a couple times maybe.
0:50.3	I'm Hamish Bell.
0:51.3	I started an own Forge building company with Hayden Farrell. And yeah, we started in 2007.
0:58.1	So I guess they called me the president of the company.
1:02.5	Title by default. Yeah, definitely. There's a short straw between me and Hayden.
1:08.8	I'm Melissa Anderson. I'm the director of sales here with Forge, and I've been with them since
1:13.7	21, and it's just been an absolute exciting time to be in the industry. And as you said, AJ,
1:21.4	it's shifting a little bit, but I think with that, it's a little bit, there's a little bit of
1:25.8	excitement there too. Yes. Absolutely.
1:28.0	Yeah. Tons of excitement.
1:28.9	Really excited to dive into this with you guys.
1:30.7	I mean, this is what you live and breathe every day. Yeah. You guys have got the inside on all of it. And not looking forward to just getting into every piece. How many facilities have you guys done now? Oh, we've built over 500 plus facilities since 2007, built over 60 million
1:47.5	square feet of self-storage all over the country. 60 million? Yes, a little. A little bit.
	...

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