Follow-Up from Las Vegas – ISS World Expo

Last month we attended the Inside Self Storage World Expo in Vegas. This show is the biggest self storage industry show of the year. It drew hundreds of self-storage owners, operators, investors, builders and vendors from around the country — and from around the world. The event provided self storage exhibits, education, workshops and more for three full days.

While there was some lamenting about ongoing challenges, we are happy to report there was an even larger sense of optimism and hope. It seemed that the general consensus was the self storage investment industry is stabilizing and growing again.

The caliber of the workshops and educational opportunities were stellar and there was something for everyone – whether you were an owner, property manager or vendor. We hope if you were there you had a chance to hear our President and self storage broker, John Gilliland, speak. Attendees were pleased to learn about the latest property values and cap rates, how buyers are looking at self-storage and the returns they’re demanding, the major stumbling blocks to self-storage transactions today, the loan amounts and terms being provided by banks and other financial institutions and the overall outlook for self-storage financing. “We received great feedback on my Self-Storage Market Update: Property Values, Financing and Loan Restructuring talk, which is always nice to hear,” says John Gilliland. “Overall the show went really well and there was a ton of great networking.”

Even the exhibit hall was jam packed with attendees standing elbow to elbow waiting to talk to the vendors present. We were really happy we attended. It was great to see everybody in the industry come together and overall we are thinking 2012 is looking pretty good.