Projects developed by CEO/President Russ Colvin
YourSpace America, Inc was formed as an investment manager to provide superior risk adjusted returns in the growing self-storage industry. This commercial real estate asset class is characterized by strong cash flows, low break-even margins and best in REIT universe returns for the last 30 years. Our business focus is the acquisition, development, and repositioning of existing self-storage facilities; the repurposing and conversion of existing commercial, retail, and industrial buildings to institutional quality self-storage properties located in the top US self-storage markets, and the construction of ground up state of the art self-storage facilities in high barrier to entry markets. The combination of a proven and highly disciplined executive management team, lower construction cost relative to replacement cost on repositioning and conversion projects, and the use of sophisticated best in market third party REIT property management resulting in exceptional all-in risk adjusted returns.
The performance of self-storage as a commercial real estate investment is unrivaled in terms of overall returns and long-term performance. For the past 30 years, self-storage was the top performing property type in the NAREIT index, with average total returns of 17.30% for the period from 1994-2023. Self-storage outperformed the Office, Industrial, Retail, Residential, Diversified, Health Care, Lodging/Resorts, Mortgage REIT, Timber, Infrastructure, Data Centers, and Specialty sectors.
Speaks volumes relative to the safety of self-storage as a commercial real estate investment
Historically, self-storage loans are generally well-performing and subject to minimal loss rates and low delinquency percentages. In particular, the sector is highlighted by consistent cash flow potential, lower maintenance costs, and general resistance to economic downturns. Through 2020 and most of 2021, the self-storage delinquency rate remained below 1%. As evident from Trepp's data, the self-storage sector continues to operate without any major disruption.
For the self-storage sector, demand remains robust in densely populated urban areas. This also explains why many self-storage investors consider criteria like population growth, job growth, average income, and median household value within a certain distance from a facility — all higher in large cities when making acquisitions. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA MSA holds the largest outstanding balance followed by the New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA MSA.