343. Where to Buy a Self Storage Facility (Finding Markets 101)
Self Storage Income
AJ Osborne
4.9 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2026
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Before you buy your first self storage investment, you’ll need to figure out where to buy. But in a country with over 10,000 different cities, just picking wherever you find a deal won’t cut it.
Today, we’re showing you exactly how to find the best self storage market for you—and it may be closer than you think. This is the checklist we use when analyzing any area for self storage investing, along with the metrics that matter most when deciding whether or not to buy there.
How much does population growth really matter? What if new facilities are being built there? Should you buy close to home, or is remote self storage investing easier than you think? And what’s the one “king” of metrics that shows you whether or not your self storage facility will flourish or fail?
Then, once you find the market, how do you get deals sent to you? We’ll share exactly who to connect with and even how to find off-market facilities so you can acquire, manage, profit, and repeat.
Beginners, this is the first stage of your self storage business—do not skip it.
What you’ll learn in today’s show:
- Where to invest in self storage and which markets will work best for you
- The “king of metrics” that can make or break any self storage investment
- The software we use when doing market research that everyone should try
- Who to connect with in a market so you can start getting deals sent your way
- How to find “off-market” self storage facilities with massive upside potential
—
- Join the Self Storage Income Community: https://www.selfstorageincome.com/learn?el=pc-episode-343
- Grab AJ’s Book, _Growing Wealth in Self-Storage 2.0_ : https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Wealth-Self-Storage-2-0-Post-Pandemic/dp/1735258865
- TractIQ: https://tractiq.com/
- 316. How to Analyze a Self Storage Facility from Scratch (6 Steps): https://www.selfstorageincome.com/podcasts/self-storage-income-2/episodes/2149092466
- 327. He Built a 15-Facility Portfolio with These “Underrated” Skills (Not Money) w/Gottfredson: https://www.selfstorageincome.com/podcasts/self-storage-income-2/episodes/2149127504
- 332. Self Storage’s “Impossible” Data Just Went Public (This Changes Everything) w/Noah Starr: https://www.selfstorageincome.com/podcasts/self-storage-income-2/episodes/2149154512
- CNBC: Self-storage real estate has ‘close to zero’ correlation to the broader economy. That’s a good thing: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/20/self-storage-real-estate-sector-opportunity.html
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | If you know how to go through this process of understanding a market in general, realistically, you could go anywhere. |
| 0:06.0 | If you have a deeper understanding of a market that, you know, big competitors, they just quickly look at the data and move on. |
| 0:13.0 | If you're able to see something that other people's miss, that's where the real opportunity is in storage is to be able to identify that nuance that not everyone's going to see. |
| 0:21.7 | But just understand that as you go through these things, all you need to do is go step by step. |
| 0:26.9 | Hey, I need to call the city today and see if there's any additional supply comment on the market. |
| 0:30.7 | Check this box. |
| 0:31.6 | Like just moving down the to-do list, take it piece by piece, chunk by chunk. |
| 0:35.2 | It is a process, but it's absolutely doable. |
| 0:37.3 | I can't do away. Take it piece by piece, chunk by chunk. It is a process, but it's absolutely doable. |
| 0:48.5 | All right, everybody, we have a killer self-storage income episode going on today. |
| 0:55.1 | George, we're talking all things, finding deals, making deals, looking at markets, everything, just high level view, |
| 1:00.5 | you know, really breaking this down, simplifying it. And I mean, start to finish from finding markets to finding opportunities, looking at facilities, how to go about some of these things. |
| 1:05.9 | I'm excited for this one, man. Yeah, no, I think that it was really good for people who are just |
| 1:09.2 | getting started. We say this |
| 1:11.2 | later in the episode that you're finding deals is the lifeblood of your business. And so if you don't |
| 1:17.1 | have deal flow, you don't have a storage business. And this is really, you know, the things that we |
| 1:21.1 | dive in today is key to being able to not only break into the industry, but really start to scale it |
| 1:26.4 | and create the investment that you want out of this. So super excited to dive into today industry, but really start to scale it and create the investment that you |
| 1:28.4 | want out of this. So super excited to dive into today and let's get to it. And really like this is it. |
| 1:33.7 | This is the bread and butter of getting in, getting started, getting a facility under your belt, |
| 1:38.1 | and being able to do more of it. So I don't know, you hear all this stuff, right? You hear that |
| 1:44.0 | the market's difficult, |
... |
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